went of their own accord, complaining that they were worked to death.  None of the village people would come to the house as servants; Auntie Dasha had to hire them from a distance.  There was only one girl from the village living in the house, Alyona, and she stayed because her whole family—­old people and children—­were living upon her wages.  This Alyona, a pale, rather stupid little thing, spent the whole day turning out the rooms, waiting at table, heating the stoves, sewing, washing; but it always seemed as though she were only pottering about, treading heavily with her boots, and were nothing but a hindrance in the house.  In her terror that she might be dismissed and sent home, she often dropped and broke the crockery, and they stopped the value of it out of her wages, and then her mother and grandmother would come and bow down at Auntie Dasha’s feet.

Once a week or sometimes oftener visitors would arrive.  Her aunt would come to Vera and say: 

“You should sit a little with the visitors, or else they’ll think that you are stuck up.”

Vera would go in to the visitors and play vint with them for hours together, or play the piano for the visitors to dance; her aunt, in high spirits and breathless from dancing, would come up and whisper to her: 

“Be nice to Marya Nikiforovna.”

On the sixth of December, St. Nikolay’s Day, a large party of about thirty arrived all at once; they played vint until late at night, and many of them stayed the night.  In the morning they sat down to cards again, then they had dinner, and when Vera went to her room after dinner to rest from conversation and tobacco smoke, there were visitors there too, and she almost wept in despair.  And when they began to get ready to go in the evening, she was so pleased they were going at last, that she said: 

“Do stay a little longer.”

She felt exhausted by the visitors and constrained by their presence; yet every day, as soon as it began to grow dark, something drew her out of the house, and she went out to pay visits either at the works or at some neighbours’, and then there were cards, dancing, forfeits, suppers. . . .The young people in the works or in the mines sometimes sang Little Russian songs, and sang them very well.  It made one sad to hear them sing.  Or they all gathered together in one room and talked in the dusk of the mines, of the treasures that had once been buried in the steppes, of Saur’s Grave. . . .  Later on, as they talked, a shout of “Help!” sometimes reached them.  It was a drunken man going home, or some one was being robbed by the pit near by.  Or the wind howled in the chimneys, the shutters banged; then, soon afterwards, they would hear the uneasy church bell, as the snow-storm began.