"Kuzka, come to bed," Matvey Savitch bawled to him.

"Yes, it's time," said Dyudya, getting up; he yawned loudly and added:

"Folks will go their own way, and that's what comes of it."

Over the yard the moon was floating now in the heavens; she was moving
one way, while the clouds beneath moved the other way; the clouds were
disappearing into the darkness, but still the moon could be seen high
above the yard.

Matvey Savitch said a prayer, facing the church, and saying good-night,
he lay down on the ground near his cart. Kuzka, too, said a prayer, lay
down in the cart, and covered himself with his little overcoat; he
made himself a little hole in the hay so as to be more comfortable, and
curled up so that his elbows looked like knees. From the yard Dyudya
could be seen lighting a candle in his room below, putting on his
spectacles and standing in the corner with a book. He was a long while
reading and crossing himself.

The travellers fell asleep. Afanasyevna and Sofya came up to the cart
and began looking at Kuzka.

"The little orphan's asleep," said the old woman. "He's thin and frail,
nothing but bones. No mother and no one to care for him properly."

"My Grishutka must be two years older," said Sofya. "Up at the factory
he lives like a slave without his mother. The foreman beats him, I
dare say. When I looked at this poor mite just now, I thought of my own
Grishutka, and my heart went cold within me."

A minute passed in silence.

"Doesn't remember his mother, I suppose," said the old woman.

"How could he remember?"

And big tears began dropping from Sofya's eyes.

"He's curled himself up like a cat," she said, sobbing and laughing with
tenderness and sorrow.... "Poor motherless mite!"

Kuzka started and opened his eyes. He saw before him an ugly, wrinkled,
tear-stained face, and beside it another, aged and toothless, with a
sharp chin and hooked nose, and high above them the infinite sky with
the flying clouds and the moon. He cried out in fright, and Sofya, too,
uttered a cry; both were answered by the echo, and a faint stir passed
over the stifling air; a watchman tapped somewhere near, a dog barked.
Matvey Savitch muttered something in his sleep and turned over on the
other side.

Late at night when Dyudya and the old woman and the neighbouring
watchman were all asleep, Sofya went out to the gate and sat down on the
bench. She felt stifled and her head ached from weeping. The street was
a wid