From his old father Nikolay learned that Marya was afraid to live in the forest with Kiryak, and that when he was drunk he always came for her, made a row, and beat her mercilessly.

“Ma-arya!” the shout sounded close to the door.

“Protect me, for Christ’s sake, good people!” faltered Marya, breathing as though she had been plunged into very cold water.  “Protect me, kind people....”

All the children in the hut began crying, and looking at them, Sasha, too, began to cry.  They heard a drunken cough, and a tall, black-bearded peasant wearing a winter cap came into the hut, and was the more terrible because his face could not be seen in the dim light of the little lamp.  It was Kiryak.  Going up to his wife, he swung his arm and punched her in the face with his fist.  Stunned by the blow, she did not utter a sound, but sat down, and her nose instantly began bleeding.

“What a disgrace!  What a disgrace!” muttered the old man, clambering up on to the stove.  “Before visitors, too!  It’s a sin!”

The old mother sat silent, bowed, lost in thought; Fyokla rocked the cradle.

Evidently conscious of inspiring fear, and pleased at doing so, Kiryak seized Marya by the arm, dragged her towards the door, and bellowed like an animal in order to seem still more terrible; but at that moment he suddenly caught sight of the visitors and stopped.

“Oh, they have come,...” he said, letting his wife go; “my own brother and his family....”

Staggering and opening wide his red, drunken eyes, he said his prayer before the image and went on: 

“My brother and his family have come to the parental home... from Moscow, I suppose.  The great capital Moscow, to be sure, the mother of cities....  Excuse me.”

He sank down on the bench near the samovar and began drinking tea, sipping it loudly from the saucer in the midst of general silence....  He drank off a dozen cups, then reclined on the bench and began snoring.

They began going to bed.  Nikolay, as an invalid, was put on the stove with his old father; Sasha lay down on the floor, while Olga went with the other women into the barn.

“Aye, aye, dearie,” she said, lying down on the hay beside Marya; “you won’t mend your trouble with tears.  Bear it in patience, that is all.  It is written in the Scriptures:  ’If anyone smite thee on the right cheek, offer him the left one also.’...  Aye, aye, dearie.”

Then in a low singsong murmur she told them about Moscow, about her own life, how she had been a servant in furnished lodgings.

“And in Moscow the houses are big, built of brick,” she said; “and there are ever so many churches, forty times forty, dearie; and they are all gentry in the houses, so handsome and so proper!”