“Listen, watchman,” asked Tamara, “what’s this crackling under my feet all the time?”

“Crack-ling?” the watchman questioned her over again, and scratched himself, “why, lice, it must be,” he said indifferently.  “It’s fierce how these beasties do multiply on the corpseses! ...  But who you lookin’ for—­man or woman?”

“A woman,” answered Tamara.

“And that means that all these ain’t yours?”

“No, they’re all strangers.”

“There, now! ...  That means I have to go to the morgue.  When did they bring her, now?”

“On Saturday, grandpa,” and Tamara at this got out her purse.  “Saturday, in the daytime.  There’s something for tobacco for you, my dear sir!”

“That’s the way!  Saturday, you say in the daytime?  And what did she have on?”

“Well, almost nothing; a little night blouse, an underskirt ... both the one and the other white.”

“So-o!  That must be number two hundred and seventeen ...  How is she called, now? ...”

“Susannah Raitzina.”

“I’ll go and see—­maybe she’s there.  Well, now, mam’selles,” he turned to the young ladies, who were dully huddling in the doorway, obstructing the light.  “Which of you are the braver?  If your friend came the day before yesterday, then that means that she’s now lying in the manner that the Lord God has created all mankind—­that is, without anything ...  Well, who of you will be the bolder?  Which two of you will come?  She’s got to be dressed...”

“Well, now, you go, Manka,” Tamara ordered her mate, who, grown chill and pale from horror and aversion, was staring at the dead with widely open, limpid eyes.  “Don’t be afraid, you fool—­I’ll go with you!  Who’s to go, if not you?

“Well, am I ... well, am I? ...” babbled Little White Manka with barely moving lips.  “Let’s go.  It’s all the same to me...”

The morgue was right here, behind the chapel—­a low, already entirely dark basement, into which one had to descend by six steps.

The watchman ran off somewhere, and returned with a candle-end and a tattered book.  When he had lit the candle, the girls saw a score of corpses that were lying directly on the stone floor in regular rows—­extended, yellow, with faces distorted by pre-mortal convulsions, with skulls split open, with clots of blood on their faces, with grinning teeth.

“Right away ... right away...” the watchman was saying, guiding his finger over the headings.  “The day before yesterday ... that means, on Saturday ... on Saturday ...  What did you say her name was, now?”

“Raitzina, Susannah,” answered Tamara.

“Rai-tzina Susannah ...” said the watchman, just as though he were singing, “Raitzina, Susannah.  Just as I said.  Two hundred seventeen.”  Bending over the dead and illuminating them with the guttered and dripping candle-end, he passed from one to another.  Finally he stopped before a corpse, upon whose foot was written in ink, in large black figures:  217.