The steward sent messengers to the priest and to the policeman, and appointed men to keep guard. Aksyúta, the maid from “up there,” kept gazing with staring eyes at the opening that led to the garret, and though she could not see anything, was unable to tear herself away and go back to her mistress. Agatha Miháylovna, who had been lady’s-maid to the former proprietress, was weeping and asking for some tea to soothe her nerves. Anna, the midwife, was laying out the little body on the table, with her practised, plump, oily hands. Other women stood in front of Akoulína, silently looking at her. The children, huddled together in a corner, kept glancing at their mother and bursting into howls; and then, growing silent for a moment, glanced again, and huddled still closer. Boys and men thronged round the porch, looking in at the door and the windows with frightened faces; and, unable to see or understand anything, asking one another what it was all about. One said the joiner had chopped off his wife’s foot with an axe. Another said that the laundress had borne triplets; a third, that the cook’s cat had gone mad and bitten the people. But the truth gradually spread, and at last it reached the proprietress. And apparently no one understood how to prepare her!