Konev closes his eyes with a smile, and says nothing more. Almost until the vigil service is over are we kept kicking our heels about that forecourt, like sheep in a slaughter-house. Then Konev, myself, the two women, and the fat-faced young fellow are led away towards the outskirts of the village, and allotted an empty hut with broken-down walls and a cracked window. "No going out will be permitted," says the Cossack who has conducted us thither. "Else you will be arrested." "Then give us a morsel of bread," Konev says with a stammer. "Have you done any work here?" the Cossack inquires. "Yes--a little." "For me?" "No. It did not so happen." "When it does so happen I will give you some bread." And like a water-butt the fat kindly-looking man goes rolling out of the yard. "What else was to be expected?" grumbles Konev with his eyebrows elevated to the middle of his forehead. "The folk hereabouts are knaves. Ah, well!" As for the women, they withdraw to the darkest corner of the hut, and lie down, while the young fellow disappears after probing the walls and floor, and returns with an armful of straw which he strews upon the hard, beaten clay. Then he stretches himself thereon with hands clasped behind his battered head. "See the resourcefulness of that fellow from Penza!" comments Konev enviously. "Hi, you women! There is, it would seem, some straw about." To this comes from the women's corner the acid reply: "Then go and fetch some." "For you?" "Yes, for us." "Then I must, I suppose." Nevertheless Konev merely remains sitting on the windowsill, and discoursing on the subject of certain needy folk who do but desire to go and say their prayers in church, yet are banded into barns. "Yes, and though you may say that folk, the world over, have a soul in common, I tell you that this is not so--that, on the contrary, we Russian strangers find it a hard matter here to get looked upon as respectable." With which he slips out quietly into the street, and disappears from view. The young fellow's sleep is restless--he keeps tossing about, with his fat arms and legs sprawling over the floor, and grunting, and snoring. Under him the straw makes a crackling sound, while the two women whisper together in the darkness, and the reeds of the dry thatch on the roof rustle (the wind is still drawing an occasional breath), and ever and anon a twig brushes against an outside wall. The scene is like a scene in a dream. Out of doors the myriad tongues of the pitch-black, starless night seem to be debating something in soft, sad, pitiful tones which ever keep growing fainter; until, when the hour of ten has been struck on the watchman's gong, and the metal ceases to vibrate, the world grows quieter still, much as though all living things, alarmed by the clang in the night, have concealed themselves in the invisible earth or the equally invisible heavens.