The hunchback Alyoshka came into the yard from the street and ran out of breath into the house, not looking at any one.  A minute later he ran out of the house with a concertina.  Jingling some coppers in his pocket, and cracking sunflower seeds as he ran, he went out at the gate.

“And who’s that, pray?” asked Matvey Savitch.

“My son Alexey,” answered Dyudya.  “He’s off on a spree, the rascal.  God has afflicted him with a hump, so we are not very hard on him.”

“And he’s always drinking with the other fellows, always drinking,” sighed Afanasyevna.  “Before Carnival we married him, thinking he’d be steadier, but there! he’s worse than ever.”

“It’s been no use.  Simply keeping another man’s daughter for nothing,” said Dyudya.

Somewhere behind the church they began to sing a glorious, mournful song.  The words they could not catch and only the voices could be heard—­two tenors and a bass.  All were listening; there was complete stillness in the yard....  Two voices suddenly broke off with a loud roar of laughter, but the third, a tenor, still sang on, and took so high a note that every one instinctively looked upwards, as though the voice had soared to heaven itself.

Varvara came out of the house, and screening her eyes with her hand, as though from the sun, she looked towards the church.

“It’s the priest’s sons with the schoolmaster,” she said.

Again all the three voices began to sing together.  Matvey Savitch sighed and went on: 

“Well, that’s how it was, old man.  Two years later we got a letter from Vasya from Warsaw.  He wrote that he was being sent home sick.  He was ill.  By that time I had put all that foolishness out of my head, and I had a fine match picked out all ready for me, only I didn’t know how to break it off with my sweetheart.  Every day I’d make up my mind to have it out with Mashenka, but I didn’t know how to approach her so as not to have a woman’s screeching about my ears.  The letter freed my hands.  I read it through with Mashenka; she turned white as a sheet, while I said to her:  ‘Thank God; now,’ says I, ‘you’ll be a married woman again.’  But says she:  ‘I’m not going to live with him.’  ’Why, isn’t he your husband?’ said I.  ’Is it an easy thing?...  I never loved him and I married him not of my own free will.  My mother made me.’  ’Don’t try to get out of it, silly,’ said I, ’but tell me this:  were you married to him in church or not?’ ‘I was married,’ she said, ’but it’s you that I love, and I will stay with you to the day of my death.  Folks may jeer.  I don’t care....’  ‘You’re a Christian woman,’ said I, ’and have read the Scriptures; what is written there?’

“Once married, with her husband she must live,” said Dyudya.

“‘Man and wife are one flesh.  We have sinned,’ I said, ’you and I, and it is enough; we must repent and fear God.  We must confess it all to Vasya,’ said I; ’he’s a quiet fellow and soft—­he won’t kill you.  And indeed,’ said I, ’better to suffer torments in this world at the hands of your lawful master than to gnash your teeth at the dread Seat of Judgment.’  The wench wouldn’t listen; she stuck to her silly, ’It’s you I love!’ and nothing more could I get out of her.