The next morning I was sitting in a hospital ward on my stepfather's bed. It was a long bed, and his feet, in gray, worn socks, stuck out through the rails. His beautiful eyes, dully wandering over the yellow walls, rested on my face and on the small hands of a young girl who sat on a bench at the head of the bed. Her hands rested on the pillow, and my stepfather rubbed his cheek against them, his mouth hanging open. She was a plump girl, wearing a shiny, dark frock. The tears flowed slowly over her oval face; her wet blue eyes never moved from my stepfather's face, with its sharp bones, large, sharp-pointed nose, and dark mouth. "The priest ought to be here," she whispered, "but he forbids it--he does not understand." And taking her hands from the pillow, she pressed them to her breast as if praying. In a minute my stepfather came to himself, looked at the ceiling and frowned, as if he were trying to remember something. Then he stretched his lank hand toward me. "You? Thank you. Here I am, you see. I feel to stupid." The effort tired him; he closed his eyes. I stroked his long cold fingers with the blue nails. The girl asked softly: "Evgen Vassilvich, introduce us, please!" "You must know each other," he said, indicating her with his eyes. "A dear creature--" He stopped speaking, his mouth opened wider and wider, and he suddenly shrieked out hoarsely, like a raven. Throwing herself on the bed, clutching at the blanket, waving her bare arms about, the girl also screamed, burying her head in the tossed pillow. My stepfather died quickly, and as soon as he was dead, he regained some of his good looks. I left the hospital with the girl on my arm. She staggered like a sick person, and cried. Her handkerchief was squeezed into a ball in her hand; she alternately applied it to her eyes, and rolling it tighter, gazed at it as if it were her last and most precious possession. Suddenly she stood still, pressing close to me, and said: "I shall not live till the winter. Oh Lord, Lord! What does it mean?" Then holding out her hand, wet with tears, to me: "Good-by. He thought a lot of you. He will be buried to-morrow." "Shall I see you home?" She looked about her. "What for? It is daytime, not night." From the corner of a side street I looked after her. She walked slowly, like a person who has nothing to hurry for. It was August. The leaves were already beginning to fall from the trees. I had no time to follow my stepfather to the graveyard, and I never saw the girl again. CHAPTER XVII Every morning at six o'clock I set out to my work in the market-place. I met interesting people there. There was the carpenter, Osip, a grayhaired man who looked like Saint Nikolai, a clever workman, and witty; there was the humpbacked slater, Ephimushka, the pious bricklayer, Petr, a thoughtful man who also reminded me of a saint; the plasterer, Gregory Shishlin, a flaxen-bearded, blue-eyed, handsome man, beaming with quiet good-nature.