“It’s a complicated story, old man,” began Matvey Savitch, “and if I were to tell you all just as it happened, it would take all night and more.  Ten years ago in a little house in our street, next door to me, where now there’s a tallow and oil factory, there was living an old widow, Marfa Semyonovna Kapluntsev, and she had two sons:  one was a guard on the railway, but the other, Vasya, who was just my own age, lived at home with his mother.  Old Kapluntsev had kept five pair of horses and sent carriers all over the town; his widow had not given up the business, but managed the carriers as well as her husband had done, so that some days they would bring in as much as five roubles from their rounds.

“The young fellow, too, made a trifle on his own account.  He used to breed fancy pigeons and sell them to fanciers; at times he would stand for hours on the roof, waving a broom in the air and whistling; his pigeons were right up in the clouds, but it wasn’t enough for him, and he’d want them to go higher yet.  Siskins and starlings, too, he used to catch, and he made cages for sale.  All trifles, but, mind you, he’d pick up some ten roubles a month over such trifles.  Well, as time went on, the old lady lost the use of her legs and took to her bed.  In consequence of which event the house was left without a woman to look after it, and that’s for all the world like a man without an eye.  The old lady bestirred herself and made up her mind to marry Vasya.  They called in a matchmaker at once, the women got to talking of one thing and another, and Vasya went off to have a look at the girls.  He picked out Mashenka, a widow’s daughter.  They made up their minds without loss of time and in a week it was all settled.  The girl was a little slip of a thing, seventeen, but fair-skinned and pretty-looking, and like a lady in all her ways; and a decent dowry with her, five hundred roubles, a cow, a bed....  Well, the old lady—­it seemed as though she had known it was coming—­three days after the wedding, departed to the Heavenly Jerusalem where is neither sickness nor sighing.  The young people gave her a good funeral and began their life together.  For just six months they got on splendidly, and then all of a sudden another misfortune.  It never rains but it pours:  Vasya was summoned to the recruiting office to draw lots for the service.  He was taken, poor chap, for a soldier, and not even granted exemption.  They shaved his head and packed him off to Poland.  It was God’s will; there was nothing to be done.  When he said good-bye to his wife in the yard, he bore it all right; but as he glanced up at the hay-loft and his pigeons for the last time, he burst out crying.  It was pitiful to see him.