from behind the huts. He walks
with a lurching gait, scarcely moving. He is too lazy to go the
long way round, and he comes not by the road, but prefers a short
cut in a straight line down the bank, and sticks in the snow, hangs
on to the bushes, slides on his back as he comes--and all this
slowly, with pauses.

"What are you about?" he cries, falling on Matvey at once. "Why are
you standing there doing nothing! When are you going to break the
ice?"

Matvey crosses himself, takes the crowbar in both hands, and begins
breaking the ice, carefully keeping to the circle that has been
drawn. Seryozhka sits down on the box and watches the heavy clumsy
movements of his assistant.

"Easy at the edges! Easy there!" he commands. "If you can't do it
properly, you shouldn't undertake it, once you have undertaken it
you should do it. You!"

A crowd collects on the top of the bank. At the sight of the
spectators Seryozhka becomes even more excited.

"I declare I am not going to do it . . ." he says, lighting a
stinking cigarette and spitting on the ground. "I should like to
see how you get on without me. Last year at Kostyukovo, Styopka
Gulkov undertook to make a Jordan as I do. And what did it amount
to--it was a laughing-stock. The Kostyukovo folks came to ours
--crowds and crowds of them! The people flocked from all the
villages."

"Because except for ours there is nowhere a proper Jordan . . ."

"Work, there is no time for talking. . . . Yes, old man . . . you
won't find another Jordan like it in the whole province. The soldiers
say you would look in vain, they are not so good even in the towns.
Easy, easy!"

Matvey puffs and groans. The work is not easy. The ice is firm and
thick; and he has to break it and at once take the pieces away that
the open space may not be blocked up.

But, hard as the work is and senseless as Seryozhka's commands are,
by three o'clock there is a large circle of dark water in the
Bystryanka.

"It was better last year," says Seryozhka angrily. "You can't do
even that! Ah, dummy! To keep such fools in the temple of God! Go
and bring a board to make the pegs! Bring the ring, you crow! And
er . . . get some bread somewhere . . . and some cucumbers, or
something."

Matvey goes off and soon afterwards comes back, carrying on his
shoulders an immense wooden ring which had been painted in previous
years in patterns of various colours. In the centre of the ring is
a red cross, at the circumfe