cold had run from his mouth all over his body and the water was spilt on his shirt.  Then he went up to the chaise and began looking at the sleeping figures.  His uncle’s face wore, as before, an expression of business-like reserve.  Fanatically devoted to his work, Kuzmitchov always, even in his sleep and at church when they were singing, “Like the cherubim,” thought about his business and could never forget it for a moment; and now he was probably dreaming about bales of wool, waggons, prices, Varlamov. . . .  Father Christopher, now, a soft, frivolous and absurd person, had never all his life been conscious of anything which could, like a boa-constrictor, coil about his soul and hold it tight.  In all the numerous enterprises he had undertaken in his day what attracted him was not so much the business itself, but the bustle and the contact with other people involved in every undertaking.  Thus, in the present expedition, he was not so much interested in wool, in Varlamov, and in prices, as in the long journey, the conversations on the way, the sleeping under a chaise, and the meals at odd times. . . .  And now, judging from his face, he must have been dreaming of Bishop Christopher, of the Latin discussion, of his wife, of puffs and cream and all sorts of things that Kuzmitchov could not possibly dream of.

While Yegorushka was watching their sleeping faces he suddenly heard a soft singing; somewhere at a distance a woman was singing, and it was difficult to tell where and in what direction.  The song was subdued, dreary and melancholy, like a dirge, and hardly audible, and seemed to come first from the right, then from the left, then from above, and then from underground, as though an unseen spirit were hovering over the steppe and singing.  Yegorushka looked about him, and could not make out where the strange song came from.  Then as he listened he began to fancy that the grass was singing; in its song, withered and half-dead, it was without words, but plaintively and passionately, urging that it was not to blame, that the sun was burning it for no fault of its own; it urged that it ardently longed to live, that it was young and might have been beautiful but for the heat and the drought; it was guiltless, but yet it prayed forgiveness and protested that it was in anguish, sad and sorry for itself. . . .

Yegorushka listened for a little, and it began to seem as though this dreary, mournful song made the air hotter, more suffocating and more stagnant. . . .  To drown the singing he ran to the sedge, humming to himself and trying to make a noise with his feet.  From there he looked about in all directions and found out who was singing.  Near the furthest hut in the hamlet stood a peasant woman in a short petticoat, with long thin legs like a heron.  She was sowing something.  A white dust floated languidly from her sieve down the hillock.  Now it was evident that she was singing.  A couple of yards from her a little bare-headed boy in nothing but a smock was standing motionless.  As though fascinated by the song, he stood stock-still, staring away into the distance, probably at Yegorushka’s crimson shirt.