“Not bad,” answered the peasant, and was silent. All further attempts at conversation on the part of the priest were in vain.
They reached the patient’s house about breakfast-time.
The woman, who was still alive, had ceased to suffer, but lay on her bed too weak to move, her expressive eyes alone showing that life was not yet extinct. She gazed at the priest with a look of entreaty, and kept her eyes fixed on him alone. An old woman stood near her, and the children were up on the stove. The eldest girl, a child of ten, dressed in a loose shirt, was standing, as if she were grown up, at a table near the bed, and resting her chin on her right hand, and supporting the right arm with her left, silently stared at her mother. The priest went to the bedside and administered the sacrament, and turning towards the icon, began to pray. The old woman drew near to the dying woman, and looking at her shook her head and then covered her face with a piece of linen; after which she approached the priest, and put a coin into his hand. He knew it was a five kopeck piece, and accepted it. At that moment the husband came into the hut.
“Is she dead?” he asked.
“She is dying,” said the old woman.
On hearing this the girl burst into tears, muttering something. The three children on the stove began to howl in chorus.
The peasant crossed himself, and going up to his wife, uncovered her face and looked at her. The white face was calm and still. He stood over the dead woman for a few minutes, then tenderly covered the face again, and crossing himself several times, tamed to the priest and said—
“Shall we start?”
“Yes, we had better go.”