ed himself up. Yegorushka saw his face
and curly head. The face was pale and looked grave and exhausted,
but there was no expression of spite in it.

"Yera!" he said softly, "here, hit me!"

Yegorushka looked at him in surprise. At that instant there was a
flash of lightning.

"It's all right, hit me," repeated Dymov. And without waiting for
Yegorushka to hit him or to speak to him, he jumped down and said:
"How dreary I am!"

Then, swaying from one leg to the other and moving his shoulder-blades,
he sauntered lazily alongside the string of waggons and repeated
in a voice half weeping, half angry:

"How dreary I am! O Lord! Don't you take offence, Emelyan," he said
as he passed Emelyan. "Ours is a wretched cruel life!"

There was a flash of lightning on the right, and, like a reflection
in the looking-glass, at once a second flash in the distance.

"Yegory, take this," cried Panteley, throwing up something big and
dark.

"What is it?" asked Yegorushka.

"A mat. There will be rain, so cover yourself up."

Yegorushka sat up and looked about him. The distance had grown
perceptibly blacker, and now oftener than every minute winked with
a pale light. The blackness was being bent towards the right as
though by its own weight.

"Will there be a storm, Grandfather?" asked Yegorushka.

"Ah, my poor feet, how they ache!" Panteley said in a high-pitched
voice, stamping his feet and not hearing the boy.

On the left someone seemed to strike a match in the sky; a pale
phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out. There was a sound as
though someone very far away were walking over an iron roof, probably
barefoot, for the iron gave a hollow rumble.

"It's set in!" cried Kiruha.

Between the distance and the horizon on the right there was a flash
of lightning so vivid that it lighted up part of the steppe and the
spot where the clear sky met the blackness. A terrible cloud was
swooping down, without haste, a compact mass; big black shreds hung
from its edge; similar shreds pressing one upon another were piling
up on the right and left horizon. The tattered, ragged look of the
storm-cloud gave it a drunken disorderly air. There was a distinct,
not smothered, growl of thunder. Yegorushka crossed himself and
began quickly putting on his great-coat.

"I am dreary!" Dymov's shout floated from the foremost waggon, and
it could be told from his voice that he was beginning to be
ill-humoured again. "I am so dreary!"

All