ok upon
as near and akin becomes infinitely remote and valueless; the stars
that have looked down from the sky thousands of years already, the
mists and the incomprehensible sky itself, indifferent to the brief
life of man, oppress the soul with their silence when one is left
face to face with them and tries to grasp their significance. One
is reminded of the solitude awaiting each one of us in the grave,
and the reality of life seems awful . . . full of despair. . . .

Yegorushka thought of his grandmother, who was sleeping now under
the cherry-trees in the cemetery. He remembered how she lay in her
coffin with pennies on her eyes, how afterwards she was shut in and
let down into the grave; he even recalled the hollow sound of the
clods of earth on the coffin lid. . . . He pictured his granny in
the dark and narrow coffin, helpless and deserted by everyone. His
imagination pictured his granny suddenly awakening, not understanding
where she was, knocking upon the lid and calling for help, and in
the end swooning with horror and dying again. He imagined his mother
dead, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitsky, Solomon. But however
much he tried to imagine himself in the dark tomb, far from home,
outcast, helpless and dead, he could not succeed; for himself
personally he could not admit the possibility of death, and felt
that he would never die. . . .

Panteley, for whom death could not be far away, walked below and
went on reckoning up his thoughts.

"All right. . . . Nice gentlefolk, . . ." he muttered. "Took his
little lad to school--but how he is doing now I haven't heard say
--in Slavyanoserbsk. I say there is no establishment for teaching
them to be very clever. . . . No, that's true--a nice little lad,
no harm in him. . . . He'll grow up and be a help to his father
. . . . You, Yegory, are little now, but you'll grow big and will
keep your father and mother. . . . So it is ordained of God, 'Honour
your father and your mother.' . . . I had children myself, but they
were burnt. . . . My wife was burnt and my children, . . . that's
true. . . . The hut caught fire on the night of Epiphany. . . . I
was not at home, I was driving in Oryol. In Oryol. . . . Marya
dashed out into the street, but remembering that the children were
asleep in the hut, ran back and was burnt with her children. . . .
Next day they found nothing but bones."

About midnight Yegorushka and the waggoners were again sitting round
a small camp fi