“Hush-a-bye, my baby wee,” she hums, “while I cook the groats for thee. . . .”

A cricket is churring in the stove.  Through the door in the next room the master and the apprentice Afanasy are snoring. . . .  The cradle creaks plaintively, Varka murmurs—­and it all blends into that soothing music of the night to which it is so sweet to listen, when one is lying in bed.  Now that music is merely irritating and oppressive, because it goads her to sleep, and she must not sleep; if Varka—­God forbid!—­should fall asleep, her master and mistress would beat her.

The lamp flickers.  The patch of green and the shadows are set in motion, forcing themselves on Varka’s fixed, half-open eyes, and in her half slumbering brain are fashioned into misty visions.  She sees dark clouds chasing one another over the sky, and screaming like the baby.  But then the wind blows, the clouds are gone, and Varka sees a broad high road covered with liquid mud; along the high road stretch files of wagons, while people with wallets on their backs are trudging along and shadows flit backwards and forwards; on both sides she can see forests through the cold harsh mist.  All at once the people with their wallets and their shadows fall on the ground in the liquid mud.  “What is that for?” Varka asks.  “To sleep, to sleep!” they answer her.  And they fall sound asleep, and sleep sweetly, while crows and magpies sit on the telegraph wires, scream like the baby, and try to wake them.

“Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, and I will sing a song to thee,” murmurs Varka, and now she sees herself in a dark stuffy hut.

Her dead father, Yefim Stepanov, is tossing from side to side on the floor.  She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and rolling on the floor from pain.  “His guts have burst,” as he says; the pain is so violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can only draw in his breath and clack his teeth like the rattling of a drum: 

“Boo—­boo—­boo—­boo. . . .”

Her mother, Pelageya, has run to the master’s house to say that Yefim is dying.  She has been gone a long time, and ought to be back.  Varka lies awake on the stove, and hears her father’s “boo—­boo—­boo.”  And then she hears someone has driven up to the hut.  It is a young doctor from the town, who has been sent from the big house where he is staying on a visit.  The doctor comes into the hut; he cannot be seen in the darkness, but he can be heard coughing and rattling the door.

“Light a candle,” he says.

“Boo—­boo—­boo,” answers Yefim.

Pelageya rushes to the stove and begins looking for the broken pot with the matches.  A minute passes in silence.  The doctor, feeling in his pocket, lights a match.

“In a minute, sir, in a minute,” says Pelageya.  She rushes out of the hut, and soon afterwards comes back with a bit of candle.

Yefim’s cheeks are rosy and his eyes are shining, and there is a peculiar keenness in his glance, as though he were seeing right through the hut and the doctor.