During October Rodka had been working on the railway line, and the Bride had been sitting, without work, at home, enduring the reproaches of her mother and only occasionally earning fifteen or twenty kopeks in the garden of the manor. But her behaviour was peculiar: at home she said never a word, but only wept, and in the garden she was shrilly merry, shouted with laughter, sang songs with Donka the Goat, an extremely stupid and pretty little girl who resembled an Egyptian. The Goat was living with a petty burgher who had leased the garden, while the Bride, who for some reason or other had struck up a friendship with her, made bold eyes at her brother, an impudent youth, and as she ogled him hinted in song that she was wasting away with love for some one. Whether anything occurred between them was not known, but the whole affair ended in a great catastrophe. When the petty burghers were departing for the town just before the Feast of Our Lady of Kazan they arranged an “evening party” in their watchman’s hut, invited the Goat and the Bride, played all night on two peasant pipes, fed their guests with crude delicacies, and gave them tea and vodka for beverages. And at dawn, when their cart was already harnessed, they suddenly, with roars of laughter, flung the intoxicated Bride on the ground, bound her arms, lifted her petticoats, tied them in a knot over her head, and began to fasten them securely there with a cord. The Goat started to run away, and made a headlong dive in her fright into the tall, wet steppe-grass. When she peeped out from that shelter, after the cart with the petty burghers had rolled briskly away out of the garden, she espied the Bride, naked to the waist, hanging from a tree. The dawn was dreary and overcast; a fine rain was whispering through the garden. The Goat wept in streams, and her teeth chattered as she untied the Bride from the tree, vowing by the memory of her father and mother that lightning might kill her, the Goat, but never should they discover in the village what had taken place in the garden. Nevertheless, not a week had elapsed before rumours concerning the Bride’s disgrace became current in Durnovka.