casion, as he was going along the corridor, he tumbled and fell
down with a tray full of ham and peas. He had to leave his job. All his
own savings and his wife's were spent on doctors and medicines; they had
nothing left to live upon. He felt dull with no work to do, and he made
up his mind he must go home to the village. It is better to be ill at
home, and living there is cheaper; and it is a true saying that the
walls of home are a help.

He reached Zhukovo towards evening. In his memories of childhood he had
pictured his home as bright, snug, comfortable. Now, going into the hut,
he was positively frightened; it was so dark, so crowded, so unclean.
His wife Olga and his daughter Sasha, who had come with him, kept
looking in bewilderment at the big untidy stove, which filled up almost
half the hut and was black with soot and flies. What lots of flies!
The stove was on one side, the beams lay slanting on the walls, and
it looked as though the hut were just going to fall to pieces. In
the corner, facing the door, under the holy images, bottle labels and
newspaper cuttings were stuck on the walls instead of pictures. The
poverty, the poverty! Of the grown-up people there were none at home;
all were at work at the harvest. On the stove was sitting a white-headed
girl of eight, unwashed and apathetic; she did not even glance at them
as they came in. On the floor a white cat was rubbing itself against the
oven fork.

"Puss, puss!" Sasha called to her. "Puss!"

"She can't hear," said the little girl; "she has gone deaf."

"How is that?"

"Oh, she was beaten."

Nikolay and Olga realized from the firs t glance what life was like
here, but said nothing to one another; in silence they put down their
bundles, and went out into the village street. Their hut was the third
from the end, and seemed the very poorest and oldest-looking; the second
was not much better; but the last one had an iron roof, and curtains in
the windows. That hut stood apart, not enclosed; it was a tavern. The
huts were in a single row, and the whole of the little village--quiet
and dreamy, with willows, elders, and mountain-ash trees peeping out
from the yards--had an attractive look.

Beyond the peasants homesteads there was a slope down to the river, so
steep and precipitous that huge stones jutted out bare here and there
through the clay. Down the slope, among the stones and holes dug by the
potters, ran winding paths; bits of broken pottery, som