ood with them near the fire
and warmed himself as I am doing. A woman, seeing him, said: 'He was
with Jesus, too'--that is as much as to say that he, too, should be
taken to be questioned. And all the labourers that were standing near
the fire must have looked sourly and suspiciously at him, because he
was confused and said: 'I don't know Him.' A little while after again
someone recognized him as one of Jesus' disciples and said: 'Thou, too,
art one of them,' but again he denied it. And for the third time someone
turned to him: 'Why, did I not see thee with Him in the garden to-day?'
For the third time he denied it. And immediately after that time the
cock crowed, and Peter, looking from afar off at Jesus, remembered the
words He had said to him in the evening.... He remembered, he came to
himself, went out of the yard and wept bitterly--bitterly. In the Gospel
it is written: 'He went out and wept bitterly.' I imagine it: the
still, still, dark, dark garden, and in the stillness, faintly audible,
smothered sobbing..."

T he student sighed and sank into thought. Still smiling, Vasilisa
suddenly gave a gulp, big tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she
screened her face from the fire with her sleeve as though ashamed of her
tears, and Lukerya, staring immovably at the student, flushed crimson,
and her expression became strained and heavy like that of someone
enduring intense pain.

The labourers came back from the river, and one of them riding a horse
was quite near, and the light from the fire quivered upon him. The
student said good-night to the widows and went on. And again the
darkness was about him and his fingers began to be numb. A cruel wind
was blowing, winter really had come back and it did not feel as though
Easter would be the day after to-morrow.

Now the student was thinking about Vasilisa: since she had shed tears
all that had happened to Peter the night before the Crucifixion must
have some relation to her....

He looked round. The solitary light was still gleaming in the darkness
and no figures could be seen near it now. The student thought again that
if Vasilisa had shed tears, and her daughter had been troubled, it
was evident that what he had just been telling them about, which had
happened nineteen centuries ago, had a relation to the present--to both
women, to the desolate village, to himself, to all people. The old woman
had wept, not because he could tell the story touchingly, but because