Death and preparation for death is another favorite theme. Take _Katrusya_ for example. The poor girl is dying of tuberculosis. With the last of their money the family take her to a doctor but the comment they make is “Peasants do not need to go to doctors. He tells you to drink a lot of milk, or eat some light meat or drink some liquor, or eat white bread or something like that (all things not obtainable on a peasant’s income). It can help the gentry, but it won’t help in our class. Therefore let her die as she is.” A neighbor replies. “Do you think the doctors give the peasants the same medicine that they give the gentry or the Jews? Therefore let her die as she is.” They look at Katrusya and say, “There is nothing on her as on a leaf that has been torn away from the tree.” So death comes on but this symbol of the fallen leaf is a favorite one with Stefanyk. Indeed most of his characters are just that. They are the unsuccessful, the poor devils who have been torn away from the tree of life and yet there is something human and touching in their misery and their despair. For an example of characters drawn from the wealthier classes we have the _Basarabi_. They had been an old and brutal race which as overseers had mercilessly driven the peasants in the days of forced labor. One of them during the Turkish wars had murdered seven little children. Now in their decline they were little better although they are well-to-do peasants. The old vitality of the race is gone and with the ill concealed hatred of the other peasants and the disordered minds of the family, suicide becomes the rule rather than the exception. Tomas who has been cut down in time, tells the rest of the family of the pangs of conscience and of the weird spirits that hang around him and drive him to his deed. The doctors ascribe it all to nerves but even at this the gruesome story so impresses another of the clan, Mikolay, that he goes out into the night to commit the same deed to the consternation of the others. It is typical of the decline of a family and in the Galician setting there is something of the studied horror of Edgar Allen Poe and the other writers who set forth the degeneration of a once tyrannical family. It is longer than most of the works of Stefanyk, for it contains more of a story with a perspective over generations. It is rare that he refers back to the days of the past. For the most part his stories deal with an event in the present and he assumes as his background the whole degeneration of a community under the influence of alcohol, Jewish tavern keepers and grinding poverty. It is highly significant for Stefanyk’s attitude that he chooses as his horrible examples no outsiders but one of those Ukrainian families which had prospered in the past by devious and unmentionable methods.