"Ah! dear Lord!" sighed the painter's cook out loud. "It would be better to pray to the holy martyr St. Barbara to save us from a sudden death!" Orloff stood near his wife, and though apparently occupied with his own thoughts, watched the student with a fixed stare. Suddenly he felt some one pull his sleeve. "Little Uncle Grigori!" whispered Tschischik in his ear, standing on tiptoe, and looking at the cobbler with small round eyes that glowed like burning coals. "The poor Mitri Pavlovitch is going to die. He has no relations--what will become of his accordion?" "Keep quiet, you little imp!" Orloff replied, and pushed him on one side. Senka looked in at the window of the room from which they had just carried out the accordion-player, his eyes searching round with a covetous glance. "Well, as a final word of caution, my friends, use plenty of chloride of lime!" the student's voice was heard once more saying. CHAPTER IV Towards the end of this disturbed day, whilst the Orloffs were sitting at tea, Matrona asked her husband in a tone of curiosity, "Where did you go just now with the student?" Grigori seemed to be looking at her as through a mist, and he poured his tea from the cup into the saucer without replying. Towards mid-day, after they had disinfected the accordion-player's room, both Grigori and the sanitary officer had gone off together. On his return, Grigori had remained for nearly three hours in a silent, thoughtful mood. He had lain down on the bed, and had remained there till tea-time, his face turned up towards the ceiling, without speaking a word. In vain had Matrona tried, over and over again, to begin a conversation with him. He did not once swear, even when she worried him. This was quite an uncommon occurrence which gave her much cause for thought With the instinct of the woman whose life is absorbed in that of her husband, she guessed at once that something new had come between them. She felt alarmed, and was all the more curious to find out what had really happened. "Come, arn't you feeling very well, Grischka?" she began once more. Grigori gulped down the last drop of tea from his saucer, wiped his moustache with his sleeve, handed the cup to his wife, and said with a dark frown, "I was with the medical student, up at the Infirmary." "What, in the cholera hospital?" exclaimed Matrona, in a scared voice; and then added, terrified, "Are there many folk there?" "Fifty-three people, counting the one they brought from here." "You don't say so?--and----" "About a dozen are getting better, they can already walk about; but they are quite yellow and thin." "Are they really cholera patients...? Or have they been changed for others?--so that the doctors might be able to say they had cured them?"