his wife was alive a drunkard had died of vodka in his tavern. . . .

He slept badly at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear
that Matvey, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining for
his tile factory. And while Yakov turned over from one side to
another at night he thought of the stolen horse and the drunken
man, and what was said in the gospels about the camel.

It looked as though his dreaminess were coming over him again. And
as ill-luck would have it, although it was the end of March, every
day it kept snowing, and the forest roared as though it were winter,
and there was no believing that spring would ever come. The weather
disposed one to depression, and to quarrelling and to hatred and
in the night, when the wind droned over the ceiling, it seemed as
though someone were living overhead in the empty storey; little by
little the broodings settled like a burden on his mind, his head
burned and he could not sleep.

IV

On the morning of the Monday before Good Friday, Matvey heard from
his room Dashutka say to Aglaia:

"Uncle Matvey said, the other day, that there is no need to fast."

Matvey remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening
before with Dashutka, and he felt hurt all at once.

"Girl, don't do wrong!" he said in a moaning voice, like a sick
man. "You can't do without fasting; our Lord Himself fasted forty