“Hold your tongue,” cried Churis sternly; and with a slight smile playing under his mustaches, he turned to the master. “And I haven’t the wit to know what’s to be done with it, your excellency⁠—with this hut and props and planks. There’s nothing to be done with them.”

“How can we live through the winter here? Okh, okh! Oh, oh!” groaned the old woman.

“There’s one thing⁠—if we put in some more props and laid a new floor,” said the husband, interrupting her with a calm, practical expression, “and threw over one set of rafters, then perhaps we might manage to get through the winter. It is possible to live; but you’d have to put some props all over the hut, like that: but if it gets shaken, then there won’t be anything left of it. As long as it stands, it holds together,” he concluded, evidently perfectly contented that he appreciated this contingency.