efim Stepanov, is tossing from side to side on
the floor. She does not see him, but she hears him moaning and
rolling on the floor from pain. "His guts have burst," as he says;
the pain is so violent that he cannot utter a single word, and can
only draw in his breath and clack his teeth like the rattling of a
drum:

"Boo--boo--boo--boo. . . ."

Her mother, Pelageya, has run to the master's house to say that
Yefim is dying. She has been gone a long time, and ought to be back.
Varka lies awake on the stove, and hears her father's "boo--boo--boo."
And then she hears someone has driven up to the hut. It is a young
doctor from the town, who has been sent from the big house where
he is staying on a visit. The doctor comes into the hut; he cannot
be seen in the darkness, but he can be heard coughing and rattling
the door.

"Light a candle," he says.

"Boo--boo--boo," answers Yefim.

Pelageya rushes to the stove and begins looking for the broken pot
with the matches. A minute passes in silence. The doctor, feeling
in his pocket, lights a match.

"In a minute, sir, in a minute," says Pelageya. She rushes out of
the hut, and soon afterwards comes back with a bit of candle.

Yefim's cheeks are rosy and his eyes are shining, and there is a
peculiar keenness in his glance, as though he were seeing right
through the hut and the doctor.

"Come, what is it? What are you thinking about?" says the doctor,
bending down to him. "Aha! have you had this long?"

"What? Dying, your honour, my hour has come. . . . I am not to stay
among the living."

"Don't talk nonsense! We will cure you!"

"That's as you please, your honour, we humbly thank you, only we
understand. . . . Since death has come, there it is."

The doctor spends a quarter of an hour over Yefim, then he gets up
and says:

"I can do nothing. You must go into the hospital, there they will
operate on you. Go at once . . . You must go! It's rather late,
they will all be asleep in the hospital, but that doesn't matter,
I will give you a note. Do you hear?"

"Kind sir, but what can he go in?" says Pelageya. "We have no horse."

"Never mind. I'll ask your master, he'll let you have a horse."

The doctor goes away, the candle goes out, and again there is the
sound of "boo--boo--boo." Half an hour later someone drives up to
the hut. A cart has been sent to take Yefim to the hospital. He
gets ready and goes. . . .

But now it is a clear bright morning. Pelageya is no