He suddenly shook his head despairingly, his breast heaved with a
painful effort, and he fell back again.

'We can't let him lie here and die, though,' cried Ardalion Mihalitch;
'lads, give us the mat from the cart, and carry him to the hospital.'

Two men ran to the cart.

'I bought a horse... yesterday,' faltered the dying man, 'off Efim...
Sitchovsky... paid earnest money... so the horse is mine.... Give it...
to my wife....'

They began to move him on to the mat.... He trembled all over, like a
wounded bird, and stiffened....

'He is dead,' muttered the peasants.

We mounted our horses in silence and rode away.

The death of poor Maksim set me musing. How wonderfully indeed the
Russian peasant dies! The temper in which he meets his end cannot be
called indifference or stolidity; he dies as though he were performing a
solemn rite, coolly and simply.

A few years ago a peasant belonging to another neighbour of mine in the
country got burnt in the drying shed, where the corn is put. (He would
have remained there, but a passing pedlar pulled him out half-dead; he
plunged into a tub of water, and with a run broke down the door of the
burning outhouse.) I went to his hut to see him. It was dark, smoky,
stifling, in the hut. I asked, 'Where is the sick man?' 'There, sir, on