When we made her acquaintance, many years had passed since then, many another trouble had come into her life, but one could hear tears in her voice while she told the story of that first misfortune. It was a bitter Tisho-b'ov for them when they left the house, the gardens, the barns, and the stalls, their whole life, all those things concerning which they had forgotten, and their children had hardly known, that they were not their own possession. Their town surroundings made them more conscious of their altered circumstances. She herself, the elder children oftener still, had been used to drive into the town now and again, but that was on pleasure trips, which had lasted a day or two at most; they had never tried staying there longer, and it was no wonder if they felt cramped and oppressed in town after their free life in the open. When they first settled there, they had a capital of about ten thousand rubles, but by reason of inexperience in their new occupation they were worsted in competition with others, and a few turns of bad luck brought them almost to ruin. The capital grew less from year to year; everything they took up was more of a struggle than the last venture; poverty came nearer and nearer, and the father of the family began to show signs of illness, brought on by town life and worry. This, of course, made their material position worse, and the knowledge of it reacted disastrously on his health. Three years after he came to town, he died, and she was left with six children and no means of subsistence. Already during her husband's life they had exchanged their first lodging for a second, a poorer and cheaper one, and after his death they moved into a third, meaner and narrower still, and sold their precious furniture, for which, indeed, there was no place in the new existence. But even so the question of bread and meat was not answered. They still had about six hundred rubles, but, as they were without a trade, it was easy to foresee that the little stock of money would dwindle day by day till there was none of it left--and what then?