en he went home, quarrelled with
his wife, and lay down to sleep on the hay. He did not undress, but
slept just as he was, with a ragged coat for a coverlet. His wife was
in the hut with the girls--there were four of them, and the youngest was
only five weeks old. Mitri woke up before dawn as usual. He groaned
as the memory of the day before broke in upon him--how the horse had
struggled and struggled, and then fallen down. Now there was no horse,
and all he had was the price of the skin, four roubles and eighty
kopeks. Getting up he arranged the linen bands on his legs, and went
through the yard into the hut. His wife was putting straw into the stove
with one hand, with the other she was holding a baby girl to her breast,
which was hanging out of her dirty chemise.

Mitri crossed himself three times, turning towards the corner in which
the ikons hung, and repeated some utterly meaningless words, which he
called prayers, to the Trinity and the Virgin, the Creed and our Father.

"Isn't there any water?"

"The girl's gone for it. I've got some tea. Will you go up to the
squire?"

"Yes, I'd better." The smoke from the stove made him cough. He took a
rag off the wooden bench and went into the porch. The girl had just come
back with the water. Mitri filled his mouth with water from the pail and
squirted it out on his hands, took some more in his mouth to wash his
face, dried himself with the rag, then parted and smoothed his curly
hair with his fingers and went out. A little girl of about ten, with
nothing on but a dirty shirt, came towards him. "Good-morning, Uncle
Mitri," she said; "you are to come and thrash." "All right, I'll come,"
replied Mitri. He understood that he was expected to return the help
given the week before by Kumushkir, a man as poor as he was himself,
when he was thrashing his own corn with a horse-driven machine.

"Tell them I'll come--I'll come at lunch time. I've got to go to
Ugrumi." Mitri went back to the hut, and changing his birch-bark shoes
and the linen bands on his legs, started off to see the squire. After
he had got three roubles from Volgin, and the same sum from Nicholas
Petrovich, he returned to his house, gave the money to his wife, and
went to his neighbour's. The thrashing machine was humming, and the
driver was shouting. The lean horses were going slowly round him,
straining at their traces. The driver was shouting to them in a
monotone, "Now, there, my dears." Some women were unb