ields and marshes, so that it was
no unusual thing to meet poplars and bushes sticking out above the
surface of the water and looking in the darkness like grim solitary
crags.

The weather seemed to me magnificent. It was dark, yet I could see
the trees, the water and the people. . . . The world was lighted
by the stars, which were scattered thickly all over the sky. I don't
remember ever seeing so many stars. Literally one could not have
put a finger in between them. There were some as big as a goose's
egg, others tiny as hempseed. . . . They had come out for the
festival procession, every one of them, little and big, washed,
renewed and joyful, and everyone of them was softly twinkling its
beams. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing
in its dark depths and trembling with the quivering eddies. The air
was warm and still. . . . Here and there, far away on the further
bank in the impenetrable darkness, several bright red lights were
gleaming. . . .

A couple of paces from me I saw the dark silhouette of a peasant
in a high hat, with a thick knotted stick in his hand.

"How long the ferry-boat is in coming!" I said.

"It is time it was here," the silhouette answered.

"You are waiting for the ferry-boat, too?"

"No I am not," yawned the peasant--"I am waiting for the illumination.
I should have gone, but to tell you the truth, I haven't the five
kopecks for the ferry."

"I'll give you the five kopecks."

"No; I humbly thank you. . . . With that five kopecks put up a
candle for me over there in the monastery. . . . That will be more
interesting, and I will stand here. What can it mean, no ferry-boat,
as though it had sunk in the water!"

The peasant went up to the water's edge, took the rope in his hands,
and shouted; "Ieronim! Ieron--im!"

As though in answer to his shout, the slow peal of a great bell
floated across from the further bank. The note was deep and low,
as from the thickest string of a double bass; it seemed as though
the darkness itself had hoarsely uttered it. At once there was the
sound of a cannon shot. It rolled away in the darkness and ended
somewhere in the far distance behind me. The peasant took off his
hat and crossed himself.

'"Christ is risen," he said.

Before the vibrations of the first peal of the bell had time to die
away in the air a second sounded, after it at once a third, and the
darkness was filled with an unbroken quivering clamour. Near the
red li