"Take the clock out of the box," Ivan Koloturov ordered. "Tell the joiners to put some shelves in it, it will do as a cupboard for the office.... Now then, don't stamp, don't stamp!" That night an old woman came running in. There was a great turmoil in the village: a girl had been abused--no one knew by whom, whether by the villagers themselves or the people who had come from Moscow for flour; the old woman began to accuse the Committee men. She stood by the window and reviled them at the top of her voice. Ivan Koloturov drove her away with a blow on the neck, and she went off wailing bitterly. It was pitch-dark. The house was quiet. Milkmaids outside were singing boisterously. Ivan went into the study, sat down on the sofa, felt its softness, found a forgotten electric lamp and played with it, flashing its light on the walls as he passed through. He noticed the clock on the floor of the drawing-room and began to think what he would do with it, then he picked it up and threw it into the water- closet. A band of his men had broken their way into the other end of the house, and some one was thumping on the piano; Ivan Koloturov would have liked to have driven them away, to prevent them from doing damage, but he dared not. He suddenly felt sorry for himself and his old wife and he wanted to go home to his stove. A bell clanged--supper! Ivan quietly stole to the wine-cellar, filled up his jug, and drank, then hurriedly locked the cellar door. On the way home he fell down in the park; he lay there a long time, trying to lift himself, wanting all the while to say something and to explain--but he fell asleep. The dark, dismal autumn night enfolded the empty, frozen, desolate Steppe. DEATH I It seemed as though the golden days of "St. Martin's" summer had come to stay. The sun shone without warmth in the vast blue expanse of sky, across which swept the gabbling cranes on their annual flight southward. A hoar-frost lay in the shadow of the houses. The air was crisp and sapphire, the cold invigorating, a brooding stillness wrapped the world. The vine-wreathed columns on the terrace, the maple avenue and the ground beneath, all glowed under a purple pall of fallen leaves. The lake shone blue and smooth as a mirror, reflecting in its shining surface the white landing-stage and its boat, the swans and the statues. The fruit was already plucked in the garden and the leaves were falling. What a foolish wanton waste this stripping of the trees after summer seemed! In days such as these, the mind grows at once alert and calm. It dwells peacefully on the past and the future. The individual feels impelled by a kind of langour just to walk over the fallen leaves, to look in the gardens for unnoticed, forgotten apples, and to listen to the cries of the cranes flying south. II