The priest went on preaching in the same unsparing fashion, and dealing out menaces of God’s anger against them, with such effect that the whole congregation burst into sobs of contrition, and beat their breasts in token of repentance. Then, after a breathing-space, he again spoke of the deceased, and pointed out how he had fallen for their sakes. And he wound up with an appeal to them all to live in concord and avoid sin, since no one knew whose turn it would be next to stand before God’s awful judgment-seat. Even the Squire was seen to brush away a tear. The priest went off with him, when the funeral came to a close. And as the coffin descended with a thud into the grave, and the sand began to stream down upon it with a hollow rumbling, there arose such a tempest of cries, such a din of tumultuous lamentations, as might well have softened the hardest heart. Yuzka wept clamorously, and Magda, and Hanka, and all the relations, near or distant, and even many that were not related at all. But not less loud than the loudest rang the shrieks of Yagna, who felt something clutch and tear at her heart, and made her as one beside herself. “Yes, yes! She is bellowing now: yet what pranks she used to play upon her husband!” someone muttered aside; and Ploshkova, wiping her eyes, remarked: “She would fain find grace in their eyes, and not be expelled from the cabin.” “Does she think them such fools that they can be cozened so?” was the outspoken comment of the organist’s wife. Yagna was completely unmindful of them all. Stretched out on a mound of sand, she lay crying wildly, with a feeling as if it were she herself upon whom those heavy reverberating torrents of earth were now pouring down, for whom the bells were tolling so mournfully, and over whom the people were so sorrowfully lamenting. They now began to disperse: some, as they went, stopping to kneel and pray for some dear departed, others wandering about the tombs in dreary meditation, and others again lingering here and there, as they saw Hanka and the smith giving invitations to the customary funeral feast. The earth was now beaten down over the grave; a black cross had been stuck in; and all went to the cabin with the mourners in several groups, talking low, condoling with them, and at times shedding tears. The cabin was ready for them, with tables and settles ranged along the walls; and the company, when seated, was offered bread and vodka. They drank at first with quiet decorum, and broke a little bread. The organist read suitable prayers, and a litany was sung for the deceased, with pauses when the blacksmith went round with drinks, and Yagustynka with more bread.