For several minutes no explanation could be arrived at amidst the general tumult. A crowd of people had collected, everyone was shouting and talking, children and old women were crying. Akoulína lay unconscious.
At last the men—the joiner and the steward—who had run to the place, went up the ladder, and the joiner’s wife began telling for the twentieth time how she, “nothing doubting, went to fetch a dress, and just looked—this wise—and see … a man … and I look, and a cap is lying inside-out, close by. I look … the legs are swinging. … I went cold all over! Is it pleasant? … To think of a man hanging himself, and that I should be the one to see him! … How I came clattering down I myself don’t remember … it’s a miracle how God saved me! Really, the Lord has had mercy on me! … Is it a trifle? … such steepness and from such a height. … Why, I might have been killed!”