“When the priest had left him I said thus:  ’Whether you die or not is in God’s hands!  You are nicely prepared now, so lay ye down and go to sleep.’  Says he:  ‘Very well, little mother,’ and fell in a doze, and I too; as, not reproaching the Lord with it, I had not had a proper sleep for three nights.  At the first crow my old man comes in and wakes me; thus we were both sitting there, and he still asleep.  I says to the old man:  ‘Is he gone?’ and he says, ‘Happen and he is gone.’  I pulled him by the hand; he opened his eyes and said:  ’I feel better now.’  Then he remained quite still for about five paters and aves, and smiled toward the ceiling.  This made me angry, and I says:  ’Oh, you good-for-nothing, how can you laugh at my misery?  But he only smiled at death, not at my misery, for he began breathing very hard, and that was all he did until the sun rose.”

She began moaning again, and then invited us to come and see the body, as he was dressed already, and looked as beautiful as a picture.  Aniela wanted to go at once, but I held her back; besides, the woman had already forgotten all about it, and began now lamenting her poverty.  Her husband, it seems, had been a well-to-do peasant proprietor, but they had spent every bit of money upon their son’s education.  Acre after acre had been bought by the neighbors, and at present they had nothing but the hut,—­no land whatever.  One thousand two hundred roubles he had cost them.  They had hoped to find a shelter for their old age with him at a parsonage, and now God had taken him.  The old woman declared, with all the stoicism of the peasant, that they had already made their plans, and would go a begging.  She seemed not afraid of it, and spoke of it with a kind of half-concealed satisfaction.  She was only afraid the community might raise difficulties about the certificate, which, for some reason unknown to me, seemed to be necessary for the new profession.  Hundreds of realistic details mingled with the calling upon the Lord Jesus, the Holy Virgin, and laments over the dead son.  Aniela went into the house, and returned presently with some money for the woman.  I arrested her hand; another idea, I thought good at the time, had crossed my mind.

“So you spent a thousand two hundred roubles on your son?” I said to the woman.

“That’s so, please the gracious Pan.  We thought when he got his church we would go and live with him.  The Almighty willed it otherwise; no church for us now, but the church door” (place where beggars sit).

“I will give you the thousand two hundred roubles; you can buy some land if you like, and start fresh again.”

I should have given it at once, but had not enough money by me; I intended to take it from my aunt, and told the woman to come back for it in an hour.  She stared at me with wide-open eyes, without saying a word, and then with a cry fell down at my feet.  But I got rid of her and her gratitude very soon, as she was in a hurry to be off to tell her husband the good news.