When he reentered, it was dark in the hut. The wooden splint that served for a candle had gone out. His old woman, quiet and silent in the daytime, had rolled herself up on the sleeping-bunk, and filled the hut with her snoring. Elijah’s noisy wife was also asleep, breathing quietly. She lay on the bench, dressed just as she had been, and with nothing under her head to serve as a pillow. Doútlof began to pray, then looked at Elijah’s wife, shook his head, put out the light, hiccuped again, and climbed up on to the oven, where he lay down beside his little grandson. He threw his plaited bark shoes down from the oven in the dark and lay on his back, looking up at the rafter⁠—hardly discernible above the oven-top just over his head⁠—and listening to the sounds of the cockroaches crawling along the walls, of sighs, snoring, rubbing of foot against foot, and the noise made by the cattle outside. It was a long time before he could sleep. The moon rose. It grew lighter in the hut. He could see Aksínya in her corner, and something he could not make out: was it a coat his son had forgotten, or a tub the women had put there, or someone standing?