“Hear the old hypocrite! Asking a man to steal, and saying his prayers on the top of that!” he muttered, as he walked homewards, trying to remember things and sift them clear: for somehow he could not believe he had drunk a whole rouble’s worth. But he was not yet sober, and the cold night air made him dizzy; so he reeled and staggered along, now falling against the hedges, now against the logs of timber piled up outside the huts. He swore. “May the devil wring your necks for cumbering the road so, rascals! You must have been tipsy when you did it. Yes, drunken wretches! and his Reverence’s warnings have been all for naught.... His Reverence....” Here reflection came to him; he realized the condition he was in, and felt overwhelmed with contrition. He stopped short, looking about him for some hard thing that might be handy. Then he forgot about that, and clutched at his shaggy mane, and beat his face with his fists. “You drunken wretch, you plague-stricken swine! I will drag you before his Reverence, and he will rebuke you in presence of the whole congregation, and say you are a dog, and a miserable drunkard; you have drunk half a litre of vodka—a whole rouble’s worth—and are a beast, worse than a beast!”—A sudden wave of self-compassion then came over him; he sat down in the road and burst into tears. The moon, large and splendid, was floating through the dark space; like silver nails in the firmament, a few stars shone, sparsely scattered about; a thin grey tissue of mist hung over the pond like a veil, and waved its folds above the village. The world had entered into that unfathomable quiet of the autumn night, save that the few who were going home sang as they went, and dogs were heard to bark now and then. Also, upon the road in front of the tavern, Ambrose, still reeling from one side to the other, quavered forth his song: “Tell, Marysia mine, Tell, O best and truest, Tell whose ale thou brewest, Tell, Marysia mine!” which he repeated with interminable reiteration, until such time as the effects of his potations should cease. CHAPTER V Autumn was growing ever more and more autumnal. The pale days passed, dragging themselves over the empty soundless fields, and died away beyond the forest, always stiller, always paler, like the Sacred Host in the glimmer of a taper that is going out.