sage
on the floor.

III

The story ran that the tavern had been built in the time of Alexander
I, by a widow who had settled here with her son; her name was Avdotya
Terehov. The dark roofed-in courtyard and the gates always kept
locked excited, especially on moonlight nights, a feeling of
depression and unaccountable uneasiness in people who drove by with
posting-horses, as though sorcerers or robbers were living in it;
and the driver always looked back after he passed, and whipped up
his horses. Travellers did not care to put up here, as the people
of the house were always unfriendly and charged heavily. The yard
was muddy even in summer; huge fat pigs used to lie there in the
mud, and the horses in which the Terehovs dealt wandered about
untethered, and often it happened that they ran out of the yard and
dashed along the road like mad creatures, terrifying the pilgrim
women. At that time there was a great deal of traffic on the road;
long trains of loaded waggons trailed by, and all sorts of adventures
happened, such as, for instance, that thirty years ago some waggoners
got up a quarrel with a passing merchant and killed him, and a
slanting cross is standing to this day half a mile from the tavern;
posting-chaises with bells and the heavy _dormeuses_ of country
gentlemen drove by; and herds of homed cattle passed bellowing and
stirring up clouds of dust.

When the railway came there was at first at this place only a
platform, which was called simply a halt; ten years afterwards the
present station, Progonnaya, was built. The traffic on the old
posting-road almost ceased, and only local landowners and peasants
drove along it now, but the working people walked there in crowds
in spring and autumn. The posting-inn was transformed into a
restaurant; the upper storey was destroyed by fire, the roof had
grown yellow with rust, the roof over the yard had fallen by degrees,
but huge fat pigs, pink and revolting, still wallowed in the mud
in the yard. As before, the horses sometimes ran away and, lashing
their tails dashed madly along the road. In the tavern they sold
tea, hay oats and flour, as well as vodka and beer, to be drunk on
the premises and also to be taken away; they sold spirituous liquors
warily, for they had never taken out a licence.

The Terehovs had always been distinguished by their piety, so much
so that they had even been given the nickname of the "Godlies." But
perhaps because they lived apart like