“Rita!  Get up quick!  Quick!  Come!”

The frightened maid rose, still half asleep, and rubbed her eyes, understanding nothing.  Her mistress’ ice-cold hands clutched her, and dragged her somewhere.

“Ach lieber Gott ...  Gott in Himmel!” she muttered.  “What has happened?  What do you want?”

“Hush!  Come quick!” And Olga Vseslavovna, with a candle in her trembling hand, went forward, dragging the trembling Rita with her.  She opened the door of her bedroom, and went out.  All the doors were open en suite, and straight in front of her, in the center of the fourth, shone the coffin of her husband, covered with cloth of gold and lit up by the tall tapers standing round the bier.

“What does it mean?” whispered the general’s wife.  “Why have they opened all the doors?”

“I do not know ... they were all closed last night,” murmured the maid in reply, her teeth chattering with fear.  She longed to ask her mistress whither they were going, and what for?  She wanted to stop, and not enter the funeral chamber; but she was afraid to speak.

They passed quickly through the rooms; at the door of the last the general’s wife set her candle down on a chair, and halted for a moment.  The loud snoring of the reader startled them both.

“It is the deacon!” whispered the general’s wife reassuringly.  Rita had hardly strength to nod assent.  All the same, the healthy snoring of a living man comforted her.  Without moving from where she stood, the maid tremblingly drew her woolen shawl closer about her, trying to see the sofa on which the deacon lay.

Knitting her brows, and biting her lips till they were sore, Olga Vseslavovna went forward determinedly to the bier.  She thrust both hands under the flowers on the pillow.  The frill was untouched.  The satin of the cushion was there, but where was ...?  Her heart, that had been beating like a hammer, suddenly stopped and stood still.  There was not a trace of the will!

“Perhaps I have forgotten.  Perhaps it was on the other side,” thought Olga Vseslavovna, and went round to the left side of the coffin.

No!  It was not there, either!  Where was it?  Who could have taken it?  Suddenly her heart failed her utterly, and she clutched at the edge of the coffin to keep herself from falling.  It seemed to her that under the stiff, pallid, rigidly clasped hands of the dead general something gleamed white through the transparent muslin of the covering, something like a piece of paper.

“Nonsense!  Self-suggestion!  It is impossible!  Hallucination!” The thought flashed through her tortured brain.  She forced herself to be calm, and to look again.