"Dubinushka" that they used to sing, the peasants heard almost every
hour the sounds of a passing train.

The New Villa has long ago been sold; now it belongs to a government
clerk who comes here from the town for the holidays with his family,
drinks tea on the terrace, and then goes back to the town again. He
wears a cockade on his cap; he talks and clears his throat as though
he were a very important official, though he is only of the rank of a
collegiate secretary, and when the peasants bow he makes no response.

In Obrutchanovo everyone has grown older; Kozov is dead. In Rodion's hut
there are even more children. Volodka has grown a long red beard. They
are still as poor as ever.

In the early spring the Obrutchanovo peasants were sawing wood near the
station. And after work they were going home; they walked without haste
one after the other. Broad saws curved over their shoulders; the sun was
reflected in them. The nightingales were singing in the bushes on the
bank, larks were trilling in the heavens. It was quiet at the New Villa;
there was not a soul there, and only golden pigeons--golden because the
sunlight was streaming upon them--were flying over the house. All of
them--Rodion, the two Lytchkovs, and Volodka--thought of the white
horses, the little ponies, the fireworks, the boat with the lanterns;
they remembered how the engineer's wife, so beautiful and so grandly
dressed, had come into the village and talked to them in such a friendly
way. And it seemed as though all that had never been; it was like a
dream or a fairy-tale.

They trudged along, tired out, and mused as they went.... In their
village, they mused, the people were good, quiet, sensible, fearing God,