ack-haired as a gypsy, went up to the hut with an axe, and
hacked out the windows one after another--no one knew why--then began
chopping up the roof.

"Women, water!" he shouted. "Bring the engine! Look sharp!"

The peasants, who had been drinking in the tavern just before, dragged
the engine up. They were all drunk; they kept stumbling and falling
down, and all had a helpless expression and tears in their eyes.

"Wenches, water!" shouted the elder, who was drunk, too. "Look sharp,
wenches!"

The women and the girls ran downhill to where there was a spring, and
kept hauling pails and buckets of water up the hill, and, pouring it
into the engine, ran down again. Olga and Marya and Sasha and Motka all
brought water. The women and the boys pumped the water; the pipe hissed,
and the elder, directing it now at the door, now at the windows, held
back the stream with his finger, which made it hiss more sharply still.

"Bravo, Antip!" voices shouted approvingly. "Do your best."

Antip went inside the hut into the fire and shouted from within.

"Pump! Bestir yourselves, good Christian folk, in such a terrible
mischance!"

The peasants stood round in a crowd, doing nothing but staring at the
fire. No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do anything,
though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and piles of faggots
standing all round. Kiryak and old Osip, his father, both tipsy, were
standing there, too. And as though to justify his doing nothing, old
Osip said, addressing the woman who lay on the ground:

"What is there to trouble about, old girl! The hut is insured--why are
you taking on?"

Semyon, addressing himself first to one person and then to another, kept
describing how the fire had started.

"That old man, the one with the bundle, a house-serf of General
Zhukov's.... He was cook at our general's, God rest his soul! He came
over this evening: 'Let me stay the night,' says he.... Well, we had
a glass, to be sure.... The wife got the samovar--she was going to give
the old fellow a cup of tea, and in an unlucky hour she set the samovar
in the entrance. The sparks from the chimney must have blown straight
up to the thatch; that's how it was. We were almost burnt ourselves. And
the old fellow's cap has been burnt; what a shame!"

And the sheet of iron was struck indefatigably, and the bells kept
ringing in the church the other side of the river. In the glow of the
fir e Olga, breathless, looking with h