"You see, my dear, the women about the country have been using straw
to kindle their fires; now as that might be dangerous, I assembled my
officers, and gave them orders to prevent these women lighting fires
with anything but fagots and brushwood."

"And why did you lock up Polacca in the kitchen till my return?" Ivan
Mironoff had not foreseen that question, and muttered some incoherent
words. Basilia saw at once her husband's perfidy, but knowing that
she could extract nothing from him at that moment, she ceased her
questioning, and spoke of the pickled cucumbers which Accouline knew
how to prepare in a superior fashion. That night Basilia never closed
an eye, unable to imagine what it was that her husband knew that she
could not share with him.

The next day, returning from mass, she saw Ignatius cleaning the
cannon, taking out rags, pebbles, bits of wood, and all sorts of
rubbish which the small boys had stuffed there. "What means these
warlike preparations?" thought the Commandant's wife? "Is an attack
from the Kirghis feared? Is it possible that Mironoff would hide from
me so mere a trifle?" She called Ignatius, determined to know the
secret that excited her woman's curiosity. Basilia began by making
some remarks about household matters, like a judge who begins his
interrogation with questions foreign to the affair, in order to
reassure the accused, and throw him off his guard. Then having paused
a moment she sighed and shook her head, saying: "O God! what news!
what news! What will become of us?"

"My dear lady," said Ignatius, "the Lord is merciful; we have soldiers
and plenty of powder; I have cleaned the cannon. We may repulse this