looking thoughtfully into the fire; her daughter Lukerya, a
little pock-marked woman with a stupid-looking face, was sitting on
the ground, washing a caldron and spoons. Apparently they had just had
supper. There was a sound of men's voices; it was the labourers watering
their horses at the river.

"Here you have winter back again," said the student, going up to the
camp fire. "Good evening."

Vasilisa started, but at once recognized him and smiled cordially.

"I did not know you; God bless you," she said.

"You'll be rich."

They talked. Vasilisa, a woman of experience, who had been in service
with the gentry, first as a wet-nurse, afterwards as a children's nurse,
expressed herself with refinement, and a soft, sedate smile never left
her face; her daughter Lukerya, a village peasant woman, who had been
beaten by her husband, simply screwed up her eyes at the student and
said nothing, and she had a strange expression like that of a deaf mute.

"At just such a fire the Apostle Peter warmed himself," said the
student, stretching out his hands to the fire, "so it must have been
cold then, too. Ah, what a terrible night it must have been, granny! An
utterly dismal long night!"

He looked round at the darkness, shook his head abruptly and asked:

"No doubt you have been at the reading of the Twelve Gospels?"

"Yes, I have," answered Vasilisa.

"If you remember at the Last Supper Peter said to Jesus, 'I am ready to
go with Thee into darkness and unto death.' And our Lord answered him
thus: 'I say unto thee, Peter, before the cock croweth thou wilt have
denied Me thrice.' After the supper Jesus went through the agony of
death in the garden and prayed, and poor Peter was weary in spirit and
faint, his eyelids were heavy and he could not struggle against sleep.
He fell asleep. Then you heard how Judas the same night kissed Jesus and
betrayed Him to His tormentors. They took Him bound to the high priest
and beat Him, while Peter, exhausted, worn out with misery and alarm,
hardly awake, you know, feeling that something awful was just going
to happen on earth, followed behind.... He loved Jesus passionately,
intensely, and now he saw from far off how He was beaten..."

Lukerya left the spoons and fixed an immovable stare upon the student.

"They came to the high priest's," he went on; "they began to question
Jesus, and meantime the labourers made a fire in the yard as it was
cold, and warmed themselves. Peter, too, st