“Come, what is it?  What are you thinking about?” says the doctor, bending down to him.  “Aha! have you had this long?”

“What?  Dying, your honour, my hour has come. . . .  I am not to stay among the living.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!  We will cure you!”

“That’s as you please, your honour, we humbly thank you, only we understand. . . .  Since death has come, there it is.”

The doctor spends a quarter of an hour over Yefim, then he gets up and says: 

“I can do nothing.  You must go into the hospital, there they will operate on you.  Go at once . . .  You must go!  It’s rather late, they will all be asleep in the hospital, but that doesn’t matter, I will give you a note.  Do you hear?”

“Kind sir, but what can he go in?” says Pelageya.  “We have no horse.”

“Never mind.  I’ll ask your master, he’ll let you have a horse.”

The doctor goes away, the candle goes out, and again there is the sound of “boo—­boo—­boo.”  Half an hour later someone drives up to the hut.  A cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital.  He gets ready and goes. . . .

But now it is a clear bright morning.  Pelageya is not at home; she has gone to the hospital to find what is being done to Yefim.  Somewhere there is a baby crying, and Varka hears someone singing with her own voice: 

“Hush-a-bye, my baby wee, I will sing a song to thee.”

Pelageya comes back; she crosses herself and whispers: 

“They put him to rights in the night, but towards morning he gave up his soul to God. . . .  The Kingdom of Heaven be his and peace everlasting. . . .  They say he was taken too late. . . .  He ought to have gone sooner. . . .”

Varka goes out into the road and cries there, but all at once someone hits her on the back of her head so hard that her forehead knocks against a birch tree.  She raises her eyes, and sees facing her, her master, the shoemaker.

“What are you about, you scabby slut?” he says.  “The child is crying, and you are asleep!”

He gives her a sharp slap behind the ear, and she shakes her head, rocks the cradle, and murmurs her song.  The green patch and the shadows from the trousers and the baby-clothes move up and down, nod to her, and soon take possession of her brain again.  Again she sees the high road covered with liquid mud.  The people with wallets on their backs and the shadows have lain down and are fast asleep.  Looking at them, Varka has a passionate longing for sleep; she would lie down with enjoyment, but her mother Pelageya is walking beside her, hurrying her on.  They are hastening together to the town to find situations.

“Give alms, for Christ’s sake!” her mother begs of the people they meet.  “Show us the Divine Mercy, kind-hearted gentlefolk!”

“Give the baby here!” a familiar voice answers.  “Give the baby here!” the same voice repeats, this time harshly and angrily.  “Are you asleep, you wretched girl?”