He often spoke sadly like this, and spoke of things which had happened as if he had lived a hundred years instead of eleven. I remember that his hands were narrow, and his ringers very slender and delicate, and that his eyes were kind and bright, like the lights of the church lamps. His brothers were lovable too; they seemed to inspire confidence and to make one want to do the things they liked; but the eldest one was my favorite.
Often I was so absorbed in our conversations that I did not notice Uncle Peter till he was close upon us, and the sound of his voice sent us flying in all directions as he exclaimed:
“A gai ne?”
I noticed that his fits of taciturnity and moroseness became more frequent, and I very soon learned to see at a glance what mood he was in when he returned from work. As a rule he opened the gate in a leisurely manner, and its hinges creaked with a long-drawn-out, lazy sound ; but when he was in a bad mood, they gave a sharp squeak, as if they were crying out in pain



His dumb nephew had been married some time and had gone to live in the country, so Peter lived alone in the stables, in a low stall with a broken window and a close smell of hides, tar, sweat and tobacco; and because of that smell I would never enter his dwelling-place. He had taken to sleep with his lamp burning, and grandfather greatly objected to the habit.
“You see ! You’ll burn me out, Peter.”
“No, I shan’t. Don’t you worry. I stand the lamp in a basin of water at night,” he would reply, with a sidelong glance.
He seemed to look askance at every one now, and had long given over attending grandmother’s evenings and bringing her jam; his face seemed to be shriveling, his wrinkles became much deeper, and as he walked he swayed from side to side and shuffled his feet like a sick person.
One week-day morning grandfather and I were clearing away the snow in the yard, there having been a heavy fall that night, when suddenly the latch of the gate clanged loudly and a policeman entered the yard, closing the gate by setting his back against it while he beckoned to grandfather with a fat, gray finger. When grandfather went to him the policeman bent down so that his long-pointed nose looked exactly as if it were chiseling grandfather’s forehead, and said something, but in such a low tone that I could not hear the words; but grandfather answered quickly:
“Here? When? Good God!”
And suddenly he cried, jumping about comically:
“God bless us! Is it possible?”
“Don’t make so much noise,” said the policeman sternly.
Grandfather looked round and saw me.
“Put away your spade, and go indoors,” he said.
I hid myself in a corner and saw them go to the drayman’s stall, and I saw the policeman take off his right glove and strike the palm of his left hand with it as he said:
“He knows we ‘re after him. He left the horse to wander about, and he is hiding here somewhere.”
I rushed into the kitchen to tell grandmother all about it; she was kneading dough for bread, and her floured he’ad was bobbing up and down as she listened to me, and then said calmly:
“He has been stealing something, I suppose. You run away now. What is it to do with you?”
When I went out into the yard again grandfather was standing at the gate with his cap off, and his eyes raised to heaven, crossing himself. His face looked angry; he was bristling with anger, in fact, and one of his legs was trembling.
“I told you to go indoors!” he shouted, stamping at me; but he came with me into the kitchen, calling: “Come here, Mother !”
They went into the next room, and carried on a long conversation in whispers; but when grandmother came back to the kitchen I saw at once from her expression that something dreadful had happened.
“Why do you look so frightened?” I asked her.
“Hold your tongue !” she said quietly.
All day long there was an oppressive feeling about the house. Grandfather and grandmother frequently exchanged glances of disquietude, and spoke together, softly uttering unintelligible, brief words which intensified the feeling of unrest.
“Light lamps all over the house, Mother,” grandfather ordered, coughing.
We dined without appetite, yet hurriedly, as if we were expecting some one. Grandfather was tired, and puffed out his cheeks as he grumbled in a squeaky voice :
“The power of the devil over man! . . . You see it everywhere . . . even our religious people and ecclesiastics! . . . What is the reason of it, eh?”
Grandmother sighed.
The hours of that silver-gray winter’s day dragged wearily on, and the atmosphere of the house seemed to become increasingly disturbed and oppressive. Before the evening another policeman came, a red, fat man, who sat by the stove in the kitchen and dozed, and when grandmother asked him : “How did they find this out?” he answered in a thick voice: “We find out everything, so don’t you worry yourself!”
I sat at the window, I remember, warming an old two-kopeck piece in my mouth, preparatory to an attempt to make an impression on the frozen window-panes of St. George and the Dragon. All of a sudden there came a dreadful noise from the vestibule, the door was thrown open, and Petrovna shrieked deliriously :
“Look and see what you ‘ve got out there !”
Catching sight of the policeman, she darted back into the vestibule; but he caught her by the skirt, and cried fearfully:
“Wait! Who are you? What are we to look for?”
Suddenly brought to a halt on the threshold, she fell on her knees and began to scream; and her words and her tears seemed to choke her :
“I saw it when I went to milk the cows . . . what is that thing that looks like a boot in the Kashmirins’ garden? I said to myself ”
But at this grandfather stamped his foot and shouted :
“You are lying, you fool ! You could not see anything in our garden, the fence is too high and there are no crevices. You are lying; there is nothing in our garden,”
“Little Father, it is true !” howled Petrovna, stretching out one hand to him, and pressing the other to her head. “It is true, little Father . . . should I lie about such a thing? There were footprints leading to your fence, and the snow was all trampled in one place, and I went and looked through the fence and I saw . . . him . . . lying there . . .”
“Who? Who?”
This question was repeated over and over again, but nothing more was to be got out of her. Suddenly they all made a dash for the garden, jostling each other as if they had gone mad; and there, by the pit, with the snow softly spread over him, lay Uncle Peter, with his back against the burnt beam and his head fallen on his chest. Under his right ear was a deep gash, red, like a mouth, from which jagged pieces of flesh stuck out like teeth.
I shut my eyes in horror at the sight, but I could see, through my eyelashes, the harness-maker’s knife, which I knew so well, lying on Uncle Peter’s knees, clutched in the dark fingers of his right hand; his left hand was cut off and was sinking into the snow. Under the drayman the snow had thawed, so that his diminutive body was sunk deep in the soft, sparkling down, and looked even more childlike than when he was alive. On the right side of the body a strange red design, resembling a bird, had been formed on the snow ; but on the left the snow was untouched, and had remained smooth and dazzingly bright. The head had fallen forward in an attitude of submission, with the chin pressed against the chest, and crushing the thick curly beard; and amidst the red streams of congealed blood on the breast there lay a large brass cross. The noise they were all making seemed to set my head spinning. Petrovna never left off shrieking, the policeman shouted orders to Valei as he sent him on an errand, and grandfather cried:
“Take care not to tread in his footprints !”
But he suddenly knit his brows, and looking on the ground said in a loud, imperious tone to the policeman : “There is nothing for you to kick up a row about, Constable! This is God’s affair ... a judgment from God . . . yet you must be fussing about some nonsense or other bah!”
And at once a hush fell on them all; they stood still and, taking in a long breath, crossed themselves. Several people now came hastily into the garden from the yard. They climbed over Petrovna’s fence and some of them fell down, and uttered exclamations of pain ; but for all that they were quite quiet until grandfather cried in a voice of despair:
“Neighbors! why are you spoiling my raspberry bushes? Have you no consciences’?”
Grandmother, sobbing violently, took my hand and brought me into the house.
“What did he do?” I asked.
“Couldn’t you see?” she answered.
For the rest of the evening, until far into the night, strangers tramped in and out of the kitchen and the other rooms talking loudly; the police were in command, and a man who looked like a deacon was making notes, and quacking like a duck :
“Wha at? Wha at?”
Grandmother offered them all tea in the kitchen, where, sitting at the table, was a rotund, whiskered individual, marked with smallpox, who was saying in a shrill voice :
“His real name we don’t know ... all that we can find out is that his birthplace was Elatma. As for the Deaf Mute . . . that is only a nickname . . . he was not deaf and dumb at all ... he knew all about the business. . . . And there ‘s a third man in it too ... we ‘ve got to find him yet. They have been robbing churches for a long time; that was their lay.”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Petrovna, very red, and perspiring profusely.
As for me, I lay on the ledge of the stove and looked down on them, and thought how short and fat and dreadful they all were.