However that might have been, the suicide was still dangling in the garret, and it was as if that night the evil spirit himself had overshadowed the serfs’ quarters with his huge wing, showing his power, and coming closer to these people than he had ever done before. At any rate, they all felt so. I do not know if they were right, and I even think they were quite mistaken. I think that if some bold fellow had taken a candle or a lantern that terrible evening, and, crossing himself, or even not crossing himself, had gone up to the garret⁠—slowly dispelling with the light of the candle the horror of the night before him, lighting up the rafters, the cobweb-covered chimney, the tippets left behind by the joiner’s wife⁠—till he came to Polikéy, and if, conquering his fears, he had raised the lantern to the level of the head, he would have beheld the familiar, spare figure: the feet standing on the ground (the rope had stretched), the body leaning lifelessly to one side, no cross visible under the open shirt, the head drooping on the breast; the kind face, with open, sightless eyes and the meek, guilty smile; and a severe calmness and silence over all. Really, the joiner’s wife, crouching in a corner of her bed with dishevelled hair and frightened eyes, and telling how she heard sacks falling, is far more terrible and frightful than Polikéy, though his cross is off and lies on a rafter.