erest trifle was enough--a stomach upset, a slight chill,
and Granny would be wrapped up on the stove, and would begin moaning
loudly and incessantly:

"I am dy-ing!"

The old father hurried off for the priest, and Granny received the
sacrament and extreme unction. They often talked of colds, of worms,
of tumours which move in the stomach and coil round to the heart. Above
all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even
in the summer and warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of
being doctored, and often went to the hospital, where she used to say
she was not seventy, but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor
knew her real age he would not treat her, but would say it was time she
died instead of taking medicine. She usually went to the hospital early
in the morning, taking with her two or three of the little girls,
and came back in the evening, hungry and ill-tempered--with drops for
herself and ointments for the little girls. Once she took Nikolay, who
swallowed drops for a fortnight afterwards, and said he felt better.

Granny knew all the doctors and their assistants and the wise men for
twenty miles round, and not one of them she liked. At the Intercession,
when the priest made the round of the huts with the cross, the deacon
told her that in the town near the prison lived an old man who had been
a medical orderly in the army, and who made wonderful cures, and advised
her to try him. Granny took his advice. When the first snow fell she
drove to the town and fetched an old man with a big beard, a converted
Jew, in a long gown, whose face was covered with blue veins. There were
outsiders at work in the hut at the time: an old tailor, in terrible
spectacles, was cutting a waistcoat out of some rags, and two young men
were making felt boots out of wool; Kiryak, who had been dismissed from
his place for drunkenness, and now lived at home, was sitting beside the
tailor mending a bridle. And it was crowded, stifling, and noisome
in the hut. The converted Jew examined Nikolay and said that it was
necessary to try cupping.

He put on the cups, and the old tailor, Kiryak, and the little girls
stood round and looked on, and it seemed to them that they saw the
disease being drawn out of Nikolay; and Nikolay, too, watched how the
cups suckling at his breast gradually filled with dark blood, and felt
as though there really were something coming out of him, and smiled with
pleasure.