The only ones of those concerned in the case who could not forget it were the six peasants who were passing their seventh month in jail, and their families that were left without their heads. But nothing could be done in the matter. They were imprisoned in Krasnoslobódsk, and their families tried to get along as well as they could. Nobody could be invoked in the case. Iván Mirónovich himself said that he could not take it up, because it was not a communal, nor a civil, but a criminal case. The peasants were in prison, and nobody paid any attention to them; but one family, that of Mikhaíl Gerásimovich, particularly his wife Tíkhonovna, could not get used to the idea that the precious old man, Gerásimovich, was sitting in prison with a shaven head. Tíkhonovna could not rest quiet. She begged Mirónovich to take the case, but he declined it. Then she decided to go herself to pray to God for the old man. She had made a vow the year before that she would go on a pilgrimage to a saint, and had delayed it for another year only because she had had no time and did not wish to leave the house to the young daughters-in-law. Now that the misfortune had happened and Gerásimovich was put into jail, she recalled her vow; she turned her back on her house and, together with the deacon’s wife of the same village, got ready to go on the pilgrimage.
1623