to the floor, stood an ikon of the Annunciation, and close by a
cyprus-wood cross and the censer; wax candles were burning. Beside
the table was a reading desk. As he passed by the prayer-room,
Matvey stopped and glanced in at the door. Yakov Ivanitch was reading
at the desk at that moment, his sister Aglaia, a tall lean old woman
in a dark-blue dress and white kerchief, was praying with him. Yakov
Ivanitch's daughter Dashutka, an ugly freckled girl of eighteen,
was there, too, barefoot as usual, and wearing the dress in which
she had at nightfall taken water to the cattle.

"Glory to Thee Who hast shown us the light!" Yakov Ivanitch boomed
out in a chant, bowing low.

Aglaia propped her chin on her hand and chanted in a thin, shrill,
drawling voice. And upstairs, above the ceiling, there was the sound
of vague voices which seemed menacing or ominous of evil. No one
had lived on the storey above since a fire there a long time ago.
The windows were boarded up, and empty bottles lay about on the
floor between the beams. Now the wind was banging and droning, and
it seemed as though someone were running and stumbling over the
beams.

Half of the lower storey was used as a tavern, while Terehov's
family lived in the other half, so that when drunken visitors were
noisy in the tavern every word they said could be heard in the
rooms. Matvey lived in a room next to the kitchen, with a big stove,
in which, in old days, when this had been a posting inn, bread had
been baked every day. Dashutka, who had no room of her own, lived
in the same room behind the stove. A cricket chirped there always
at night and mice ran in and out.