Yegorushka lay on his back, and, putting his hands under his head, gazed upwards at the sky.  He watched the glow of sunset kindle, then fade away; guardian angels covering the horizon with their gold wings disposed themselves to slumber.  The day had passed peacefully; the quiet peaceful night had come, and they could stay tranquilly at home in heaven. . . .  Yegorushka saw the sky by degrees grow dark and the mist fall over the earth—­saw the stars light up, one after the other. . . .

When you gaze a long while fixedly at the deep sky thoughts and feelings for some reason merge in a sense of loneliness.  One begins to feel hopelessly solitary, and everything one used to look upon as near and akin becomes infinitely remote and valueless; the stars that have looked down from the sky thousands of years already, the mists and the incomprehensible sky itself, indifferent to the brief life of man, oppress the soul with their silence when one is left face to face with them and tries to grasp their significance.  One is reminded of the solitude awaiting each one of us in the grave, and the reality of life seems awful . . . full of despair. . . .

Yegorushka thought of his grandmother, who was sleeping now under the cherry-trees in the cemetery.  He remembered how she lay in her coffin with pennies on her eyes, how afterwards she was shut in and let down into the grave; he even recalled the hollow sound of the clods of earth on the coffin lid. . . .  He pictured his granny in the dark and narrow coffin, helpless and deserted by everyone.  His imagination pictured his granny suddenly awakening, not understanding where she was, knocking upon the lid and calling for help, and in the end swooning with horror and dying again.  He imagined his mother dead, Father Christopher, Countess Dranitsky, Solomon.  But however much he tried to imagine himself in the dark tomb, far from home, outcast, helpless and dead, he could not succeed; for himself personally he could not admit the possibility of death, and felt that he would never die. . . .

Panteley, for whom death could not be far away, walked below and went on reckoning up his thoughts.

“All right. . . .  Nice gentlefolk, . . .” he muttered.  “Took his little lad to school—­but how he is doing now I haven’t heard say —­in Slavyanoserbsk.  I say there is no establishment for teaching them to be very clever. . . .  No, that’s true—­a nice little lad, no harm in him. . . .  He’ll grow up and be a help to his father . . . .  You, Yegory, are little now, but you’ll grow big and will keep your father and mother. . . .  So it is ordained of God, ’Honour your father and your mother.’ . . .  I had children myself, but they were burnt. . . .  My wife was burnt and my children, . . . that’s true. . . .  The hut caught fire on the night of Epiphany. . . .  I was not at home, I was driving in Oryol.  In Oryol. . . .  Marya dashed out into the street, but remembering that the children were asleep in the hut, ran back and was burnt with her children. . . .  Next day they found nothing but bones.”