“Uncle Semyon’s on fire,” shouted a loud, coarse voice.

Marya was fussing about round her hut, weeping and wringing her hands, while her teeth chattered, though the fire was a long way off at the other end of the village.  Nikolay came out in high felt boots, the children ran out in their little smocks.  Near the village constable’s hut an iron sheet was struck.  Boom, boom, boom!... floated through the air, and this repeated, persistent sound sent a pang to the heart and turned one cold.  The old women stood with the holy ikons.  Sheep, calves, cows were driven out of the back-yards into the street; boxes, sheepskins, tubs were carried out.  A black stallion, who was kept apart from the drove of horses because he kicked and injured them, on being set free ran once or twice up and down the village, neighing and pawing the ground; then suddenly stopped short near a cart and began kicking it with his hind-legs.

They began ringing the bells in the church on the other side of the river.

Near the burning hut it was hot and so light that one could distinctly see every blade of grass.  Semyon, a red-haired peasant with a long nose, wearing a reefer-jacket and a cap pulled down right over his ears, sat on one of the boxes which they had succeeded in bringing out:  his wife was lying on her face, moaning and unconscious.  A little old man of eighty, with a big beard, who looked like a gnome—­not one of the villagers, though obviously connected in some way with the fire—­walked about bareheaded, with a white bundle in his arms.  The glare was reflected on his bald head.  The village elder, Antip Syedelnikov, as swarthy and black-haired as a gypsy, went up to the hut with an axe, and hacked out the windows one after another—­no one knew why—­then began chopping up the roof.

“Women, water!” he shouted.  “Bring the engine!  Look sharp!”

The peasants, who had been drinking in the tavern just before, dragged the engine up.  They were all drunk; they kept stumbling and falling down, and all had a helpless expression and tears in their eyes.

“Wenches, water!” shouted the elder, who was drunk, too.  “Look sharp, wenches!”

The women and the girls ran downhill to where there was a spring, and kept hauling pails and buckets of water up the hill, and, pouring it into the engine, ran down again.  Olga and Marya and Sasha and Motka all brought water.  The women and the boys pumped the water; the pipe hissed, and the elder, directing it now at the door, now at the windows, held back the stream with his finger, which made it hiss more sharply still.

“Bravo, Antip!” voices shouted approvingly.  “Do your best.”

Antip went inside the hut into the fire and shouted from within.

“Pump!  Bestir yourselves, good Christian folk, in such a terrible mischance!”

The peasants stood round in a crowd, doing nothing but staring at the fire.  No one knew what to do, no one had the sense to do anything, though there were stacks of wheat, hay, barns, and piles of faggots standing all round.  Kiryak and old Osip, his father, both tipsy, were standing there, too.  And as though to justify his doing nothing, old Osip said, addressing the woman who lay on the ground: