ceiling. This made me angry, and I says: 'Oh,
you good-for-nothing, how can you laugh at my misery? But he only
smiled at death, not at my misery, for he began breathing very hard,
and that was all he did until the sun rose."

She began moaning again, and then invited us to come and see the body,
as he was dressed already, and looked as beautiful as a picture.
Aniela wanted to go at once, but I held her back; besides, the woman
had already forgotten all about it, and began now lamenting her
poverty. Her husband, it seems, had been a well-to-do peasant
proprietor, but they had spent every bit of money upon their son's
education. Acre after acre had been bought by the neighbors, and at
present they had nothing but the hut,--no land whatever. One thousand
two hundred roubles he had cost them. They had hoped to find a shelter
for their old age with him at a parsonage, and now God had taken him.
The old woman declared, with all the stoicism of the peasant, that
they had already made their plans, and would go a begging. She seemed
not afraid of it, and spoke of it with a kind of half-concealed
satisfaction. She was only afraid the community might raise
difficulties about the certificate, which, for some reason unknown
to me, seemed to be necessary for the new profession. Hundreds of
realistic details mingled with the calling upon the Lord Jesus, the
Holy Virgin, and laments over the dead son. Aniela went into the
house, and returned presently with some money for the woman. I
arrested her hand; another idea, I thought good at the time, had
crossed my mind.

"So you spent a thousand two hundred roubles on your son?" I said to
the woman.

"That's so, please the gracious Pan. We thought when he got his church
we would go and live with him. The Almighty willed it otherwise; no
church for us now, but the church door" (place where beggars sit).

"I will give you the thousand two hundred roubles; you can buy some
land if you like, and start fresh again."

I should have given it at once, but had not enough money by me; I
intended to take it from my aunt, and told the woman to come back for
it in an hour. She stared at me with wide-open eyes, without saying a
word, and then with a cry fell down at my feet. But I got rid of her
and her gratitude very soon, as she was in a hurry to be off to tell
her husband the good news.

I remained alone with Aniela, who seemed moved deeply, and who
repeated:--

"How good you are! how good y