ked:

"The badness lies not in any word of a priest, but in what you yourself
have just said. You are greyheaded, Ufim, yet often you speak without
thought."

Presently Ufim's wife reappeared, and, waving her hands as though she
were brandishing a sieve, began to vent renewed volleys of virulent
abuse.

"My God," she cried, "what sort of a man is that? Why, a man who
neither speaks nor listens, but for ever keeps baying at the moon like
a dog!"

"NOW she's started!" Ufim drawled.

Westward there were arising, and soaring skyward, clouds of such a
similarity to blue smoke and blood-red flame that the steppe seemed
almost to be in danger of catching fire thence. Meanwhile a soft
evening breeze was caressing the expanse as a whole, and causing the
grain to bend drowsily earthward as golden-red ripples skimmed its
surface. Only in the eastern quarter whence night's black, sultry
shadow was stealthily creeping in our direction had darkness yet
descended.

At intervals there came vented from the window above my head the hot
odour of a dead body; and, whenever that happened, the dog's grey
nostrils and muzzle would quiver, and its eyes would blink pitifully as
it gazed aloft. Glancing at the heavens, Ufim remarked with conviction:

"There will be no rain tonight."

"Do you keep such a thing as a Psalter here?" I inquired.

"Such a thing as a what?"

"As a Psalter--a book?"

No answer followed.

Faster and faster the southern night went on descending, and wiping the
land clean of heat, as though that heat had been dust. Upon me there
came a feeling that I should like to go and bury myself in some
sweet-smelling hay, and sleep there until sunrise.

"Maybe Panek has one of those things?" hazarded Ufim after a long
pause. "At any rate he has dealings with the Molokans."

After that, the company held further converse in whispers. Then all
save the more rotund of the old women left the forecourt, while its
remaining occupant said to me with a sigh:

"You may come and look at him if you wish."

Small and gentle looked the woman's meekly lowered head as, folding her
hands across her breast, she added in a whisper:

"Oh purest Mother of God! Oh Thou of spotless chastity!"

In contrast to her expression, that on the face of the dead man was
stem and, as it were, fraught with importance where thick grey eyebrows
lay parted over a large nose, and the latter curved downwards towards a
moustache which divided intros