d a long, one-storied, dark-gray
building, with white frames around the windows and doors. There was in
its very exterior something low, pressed down, receding into the
ground, almost weird. The girls one after the other stopped near the
gates and timidly passed through the yard into the chapel; nestled down
at the other end of the yard, in a corner, painted over in the same
dark gray colour, with white frame-work.

The door was locked. It was necessary to go after the watchman. Tamara
with difficulty sought out a bald, ancient old man, grown over as
though with bog moss by entangled gray bristles; with little rheumy
eyes and an enormous, reddish, dark-blue granulous nose, on the manner
of a cookie.

He unlocked the enormous hanging lock, pushed away the bolt and opened
the rusty, singing door. The cold, damp air together with the mixed
smell of the dampness of stones, frankincense, and dead flesh breathed
upon the girls. They fell back, huddling closely into a timorous flock.
Tamara alone went after the watchman without wavering.

It was almost dark in the chapel. The autumn light penetrated scantily
through the little, narrow prison-like window, barred with an iron
grating. Two or three images without chasubles, dark and without
visages, hung upon the walls. Several common board coffins were
standing right on the floor, upon wooden carrying shafts. One in the
middle was empty, and the taken-off lid was lying alongside.

"What sort is yours, now?" asked the watchman hoarsely and took some
snuff. "Do you know her face or not?"

"I know her."

"Well, then, look! I'll show them all to you. Maybe this one? ..."

And he took the lid off one of the coffins, not yet fastened down with
nails. A wrinkled old woman, dressed any old way in her tatters, with a
swollen blue face, was lying there. Her left eye was closed; while the
right was staring and gazing immovably and frightfully, having already
lost its sparkle and resembling mica that had lain for a long time.

"Not this one, you say? Well, look ... Here's more for you!" said the
watchman; and one after the other, opening the lids, exhibited the
decedents--all, probably, the poorest of the poor: picked up on the
streets, intoxicated, crushed, maimed and mutilated, beginning to
decompose. Certain ones had already begun to show on their hands and
faces bluish-green spots, resembling mould--signs of putrefaction. One
man, without a nose, with an upper hare-lip cloven i