Matthias now lay on his couch, stiff and stark, as lifeless as a sun-dried earth-clod or a felled trunk. He still held a little sand fast in his clenched fist. In his wide-open eyes, gazing afar into some heavenly region, there was a look of wondering rapture. Nevertheless, there emanated from that body an effluence of mortality so sombre, so profoundly sad, that they had to cover it with a sheet. His death was immediately known throughout the village; and barely had the sun appeared over its roofs, when visitors came pouring in one after another, raised the sheet, looked into his eyes, and knelt down to say a prayer for him. Others, stricken with awe at this example of God’s dominion over human life, stood wringing their hands in mournful silence. Meanwhile the mourners’ lamentations continued resounding unceasingly. And now Ambrose came, turned away the crowd outside, closed the cabin door, and, together with Yagustynka and Agata (the latter having crept in to pray beside the body), set about rendering the last services to the deceased, which he always did willingly, and in general with plenty of witticisms; but this time he felt somehow heavy at heart. “So much for the happiness of any man!” he muttered, as he undressed the body. “Dame Crossbones, as often as she has a mind, will clutch you by the throat, slap you in the face; and ye, turning up your toes, are borne away to the ‘Priests’ Cow-byre’; and is there any able to resist her?” Even Yagustynka was grieved, and said, in no merry mood: “Poor man! they neglected him so in this world that ’twas better for him to die!” “Indeed? And who, then, did him any harm?” “Nay, were they so very good to him?” “And who on earth has all to his liking? Why, even a squire, even a king, must suffer trouble and pain.” “He had not to bear either hunger or cold: we can say no more.” “Ah, good Mother, what is hunger? The heart-ache gnaws far worse.” “True. I have felt it. And Yagna cut him to the heart: nor did his own children spare him.” “But,” Agata put in, interrupting the prayers she was saying, “he had children that were good, and did him no wrong.” Yagustynka turned snappishly upon her. “Say your prayers, you! ye were best. What? will she drone dirges for the dead man, and listen all the time to the talk?” “Well, but if his children were bad, would they mourn for him so? Only hark to them!” “Had he but left you so much, ye would move heaven and earth with your lamentations!” Here Ambrose interfered. “Be quiet,” he said; “here comes Yagna.” She rushed in, but stood transfixed in the middle of the room, unable to speak. They were then attiring the body in a clean shirt. “What! ... gone?” she said at last, with eyes fixed on him. Fear was gripping at her throat and her heart; her blood ran cold and she could scarcely breathe. “Did they not tell you?” Ambrose inquired.