“What’s his name?”

“Yegory,” answered Panteley.

Dymov put one foot on the wheel, caught hold of the cord which was tied round the bales and pulled himself up.  Yegorushka saw his face and curly head.  The face was pale and looked grave and exhausted, but there was no expression of spite in it.

“Yera!” he said softly, “here, hit me!”

Yegorushka looked at him in surprise.  At that instant there was a flash of lightning.

“It’s all right, hit me,” repeated Dymov.  And without waiting for Yegorushka to hit him or to speak to him, he jumped down and said:  “How dreary I am!”

Then, swaying from one leg to the other and moving his shoulder-blades, he sauntered lazily alongside the string of waggons and repeated in a voice half weeping, half angry: 

“How dreary I am!  O Lord!  Don’t you take offence, Emelyan,” he said as he passed Emelyan.  “Ours is a wretched cruel life!”

There was a flash of lightning on the right, and, like a reflection in the looking-glass, at once a second flash in the distance.

“Yegory, take this,” cried Panteley, throwing up something big and dark.

“What is it?” asked Yegorushka.

“A mat.  There will be rain, so cover yourself up.”

Yegorushka sat up and looked about him.  The distance had grown perceptibly blacker, and now oftener than every minute winked with a pale light.  The blackness was being bent towards the right as though by its own weight.

“Will there be a storm, Grandfather?” asked Yegorushka.

“Ah, my poor feet, how they ache!” Panteley said in a high-pitched voice, stamping his feet and not hearing the boy.

On the left someone seemed to strike a match in the sky; a pale phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out.  There was a sound as though someone very far away were walking over an iron roof, probably barefoot, for the iron gave a hollow rumble.

“It’s set in!” cried Kiruha.

Between the distance and the horizon on the right there was a flash of lightning so vivid that it lighted up part of the steppe and the spot where the clear sky met the blackness.  A terrible cloud was swooping down, without haste, a compact mass; big black shreds hung from its edge; similar shreds pressing one upon another were piling up on the right and left horizon.  The tattered, ragged look of the storm-cloud gave it a drunken disorderly air.  There was a distinct, not smothered, growl of thunder.  Yegorushka crossed himself and began quickly putting on his great-coat.

“I am dreary!” Dymov’s shout floated from the foremost waggon, and it could be told from his voice that he was beginning to be ill-humoured again.  “I am so dreary!”