Fyokla suddenly broke into a loud, coarse howl, but immediately checked herself, and only uttered sobs from time to time, growing softer and on a lower note, until she relapsed into silence.  From time to time from the other side of the river there floated the sound of the beating of the hours; but the time seemed somehow strange—­five was struck and then three.

“Oh Lord!” sighed the cook.

Looking at the windows, it was difficult to tell whether it was still moonlight or whether the dawn had begun.  Marya got up and went out, and she could be heard milking the cows and saying, “Stea-dy!” Granny went out, too.  It was still dark in the hut, but all the objects in it could be discerned.

Nikolay, who had not slept all night, got down from the stove.  He took his dress-coat out of a green box, put it on, and going to the window, stroked the sleeves and took hold of the coat-tails—­and smiled.  Then he carefully took off the coat, put it away in his box, and lay down again.

Marya came in again and began lighting the stove.  She was evidently hardly awake, and seemed dropping asleep as she walked.  Probably she had had some dream, or the stories of the night before came into her mind as, stretching luxuriously before the stove, she said: 

“No, freedom is better.”

VII

The master arrived—­that was what they called the police inspector.  When he would come and what he was coming for had been known for the last week.  There were only forty households in Zhukovo, but more than two thousand roubles of arrears of rates and taxes had accumulated.

The police inspector stopped at the tavern.  He drank there two glasses of tea, and then went on foot to the village elder’s hut, near which a crowd of those who were in debt stood waiting.  The elder, Antip Syedelnikov, was, in spite of his youth—­he was only a little over thirty—­strict and always on the side of the authorities, though he himself was poor and did not pay his taxes regularly.  Evidently he enjoyed being elder, and liked the sense of authority, which he could only display by strictness.  In the village council the peasants were afraid of him and obeyed him.  It would sometimes happen that he would pounce on a drunken man in the street or near the tavern, tie his hands behind him, and put him in the lock-up.  On one occasion he even put Granny in the lock-up because she went to the village council instead of Osip, and began swearing, and he kept her there for a whole day and night.  He had never lived in a town or read a book, but somewhere or other had picked up various learned expressions, and loved to make use of them in conversation, and he was respected for this though he was not always understood.

When Osip came into the village elder’s hut with his tax book, the police inspector, a lean old man with a long grey beard, in a grey tunic, was sitting at a table in the passage, writing something.  It was clean in the hut; all the walls were dotted with pictures cut out of the illustrated papers, and in the most conspicuous place near the ikon there was a portrait of the Battenburg who was the Prince of Bulgaria.  By the table stood Antip Syedelnikov with his arms folded.