ng into the
yard.

"Let the people look," bawled Aksinya. "I will shame you all! You shall
burn with shame! You shall grovel at my feet. Hey! Stepan," she called
to the deaf man, "let us go home this minute! Let us go to my father and
mother; I don't want to live with convicts. Get ready!"

Clothes were hanging on lines stretched across the yard; she snatched
off her petticoats and blouses still wet and flung them into the deaf
man's arms. Then in her fury she dashed about the yard by the linen,
tore down all of it, and what was not hers she threw on the ground and
trampled upon.

"Holy Saints, take her away," moaned Varvara. "What a woman! Give her
Butyokino! Give it her, for the Lord's sake!

"Well! Wha-at a woman!" people were saying at the gate. "She's a
wo-oman! She's going it--something like!"

Aksinya ran into the kitchen where washing was going on. Lipa was
washing alone, the cook had gone to the river to rinse the clothes.
Steam was rising from the trough and from the caldron on the side of
the stove, and the kitchen was thick and stifling from the steam. On the
floor was a heap of unwashed clothes, and Nikifor, kicking up his little
red legs, had been put down on a bench near them, so that if he fell he
should not hurt himself. Just as Aksinya went in Lipa took the
former's chemise out of the heap and put it in the trough, and was
just stretching out her hand to a big ladle of boiling water which was
standing on the table.

"Give it here," said Aksinya, looking at her with hatred, and snatching
the chemise out of the trough; "it is not your business to touch my
linen! You are a convict's wife, and ought to know your place and who
you are."

Lipa gazed at her, taken aback, and did not understand, but suddenly
she caught the look Aksinya turned upon the child, and at once she
understood and went numb all over.

"You've taken my land, so here you are!" Saying this Aksinya snatched up
the ladle with the boiling water and flung it over Nikifor.

After this there was heard a scream such as had never been heard before
in Ukleevo, and no one would have believed that a little weak creature
like Lipa could scream like that. And it was suddenly silent in the
yard.

Aksinya walked into the house with her old naive smile.... The deaf man
kept moving about the yard with his arms full of linen, then he began
hanging it up again, in silence, without haste. And until the cook came
back from the river no one ventu