"This will last me a long time," he said. "We've got tobacco. We're well provided with tea and sugar. Nothing is missing but vodka. However, should we want vodka, we'll get vodka, too. Nevertheless, I will restrain myself for a little while yet. I am too busy now, I have to keep an eye on the cellars. Weaken your watch for a single instant, and everything will be pillaged. _She_ saw me, brother, she saw me, the hag, once, when I was gliding by along the kitchen wall. She stood at the window looking at me and I bet she thought: 'Well, well, so that's why I miss so many cucumbers.'" Then came October. It began to rain, the road turned black, into an impassable stream of mud. Stepan Vladimirych could not go out because his only garments were his father's old dressing-gown and worn slippers. He sat at his window watching the tiny, humble village drowned in mud. There, in the gray autumn mist, men were moving about briskly, looking like black dots. The heavy summer work was still in full swing, but now its setting was no longer the jubilant, sun-flooded hues of summer, but the endless autumn twilight. The corn kilns emitted clouds of smoke far into the night. The melancholy clatter of the flails resounded in the air. Thrashing was also going on in the manorial barns, and in the office they said it would hardly be possible to get through with the whole mass of grain before Shrovetide. Everything looked gloomy and drowsy, everything spoke of oppressiveness. The doors of the counting-house were no longer ajar, and inside the air was filled with a bluish fog rising from the wet fur cloaks.