“Don’t go and ask the Elder, daddy, but come straight to us,” she said kindly. “Ours is the third hut from the end. My mother-in-law lets pilgrims in free.”
“The third hut? That’s Zinóvyef’s?” said the old man, moving his black eyebrows expressively.
“Ah, do you know it?”
“I’ve been here before.”
“Fédya, what are you gaping at there? The lame one has stopped behind!” cried the young woman, pointing to a sheep limping on three legs and lagging behind the herd; and, swinging her switch with her right hand, she pulled the sacking well over her head, catching it from underneath with her left hand in a peculiar way as she ran back to drive the lame black sheep on.
The old man was Kornéy; the young woman was Agatha, whose arm he had broken seventeen years before. She had married into a well-to-do peasant family at Andréyevo, three miles from Gáyi.
From a strong prosperous proud man, Kornéy Vasílyef had become what he now was: an old beggar possessing nothing but the shabby clothes on his back, and two shirts and a soldier’s passport which he carried in his wallet. This change had come about so gradually that he could not tell when it began nor how it happened. The one thing he knew, and was sure of, was that his wicked wife had been the cause of all his misfortunes. It was strange and painful to him to remember what he had once been; and when he did remember it, he also remembered and hated her whom he considered to be the cause of all the evil he had suffered these seventeen years.
After that night when he beat his wife, he had gone to the landowner whose wood was for sale, but he was unsuccessful: the wood had already