ations that stand solitary in the open country or
in the forest when the wind howls and nothing else is heard and
when all the emptiness around, all the dreariness of life slowly
ebbing away is felt.

Matvey lived not far from the station at his cousin's tavern. But
he did not want to go home. He sat down at the refreshment bar and
began talking to the waiter in a low voice.

"We had our own choir in the tile factory. And I must tell you that
though we were only workmen, our singing was first-rate, splendid.
We were often invited to the town, and when the Deputy Bishop,
Father Ivan, took the service at Trinity Church, the bishop's singers
sang in the right choir and we in the left. Only they complained
in the town that we kept the singing on too long: 'the factory choir
drag it out,' they used to say. It is true we began St. Andrey's
prayers and the Praises between six and seven, and it was past
eleven when we finished, so that it was sometimes after midnight
when we got home to the factory. It was good," sighed Matvey. "Very
good it was, indeed, Sergey Nikanoritch! But here in my father's
house it is anything but joyful. The nearest church is four miles
away; with my weak health I can't get so far; there are no singers
there. And there is no peace or quiet in our family; day in day
out, there is an uproar, scolding, uncleanliness; we all eat out
of one bowl like peasants; and there are beetles in the cabbage
soup. . . . God has not given me health, else I would have gone
away long ago, Sergey Nikanoritch."

Matvey Terehov was a middle-aged man about forty-five, but he had
a look of ill-health; his face was wrinkled and his lank, scanty
beard was quite grey, and that made him seem many years older. He
spoke in a weak voice, circumspectly, and held his chest when he
coughed, while his eyes assumed the uneasy and anxious look one
sees in very apprehensive people. He never said definitely what was
wrong with him, but he was fond of describing at length how once
at the factory he had lifted a heavy box and had ruptured himself,
and how this had led to "the gripes," and had forced him to give
up his work in the tile factory and come back to his native place;
but he could not explain what he meant by "the gripes."

"I must own I am not fond of my cousin," he went on, pouring himself
out some tea. "He is my elder; it is a sin to censure him, and I
fear the Lord, but I cannot bear it in patience. He is a haughty,
surly, a