id-day, Nilushka passed into the other
world. That day, after returning home from late Mass, and handing to
his mother a couple of wafers which had been given him as a mark of
charity, the lad said:

"Mother, please lay out my bed on the chest, for I think that I am
going to lie down for the last time."

Yet the words in no way surprised Felitzata, for he had often before
remarked, before retiring to rest:

"Some day we shall all of us have to die."

At the same time, whereas, on previous occasions, Nilushka had never
gone to sleep without first of all singing to himself his little song,
and then chanting the eternal, universal "Lord, have mercy upon us!"
he, on this occasion, merely folded his hands upon his breast, closed
his eyes, and relapsed into slumber.

That day Felitzata had dinner, and then departed on business of her
own; and when she returned in the evening, she was astonished to find
that her son was still asleep. Next, on looking closer at him, she
perceived that he was dead.

"I looked," she related plaintively to some of the suburban residents
who came running to her cot, "and perceived his little feet to be blue;
and since it was only just before Mass that I had washed his hands with
soap, I remarked the more readily that his feet were become less white
than his hands. And when I felt one of those hands, I found that it had
stiffened."

On Felitzata's face, as she recounted this, there was manifest a
nervous expression. Likewise, her features were a trifle flushed. Yet
gleaming also through the tears in her languorous eyes there was a
sense of relief--one might almost have said a sense of joy.

"Next," continued she, "I looked closer still, and then fell on my
knees before the body, sobbing: 'Oh my darling, whither art thou fled?
Oh God, wherefore hast Thou taken him from me?'"

Here Felitzata inclined her head upon her left shoulder contracted her
brows over her mischievous eyes, clasped her hands to her breast, and
fell into the lament:

Oh, gone is my dove, my radiant moon!
O star of mine eyes, thou hast set too soon!
In darksome depths thy light lies drown'd,
And time must yet complete its round,
And the trump of the Second Advent sound,
Ere ever my--

"Here, you! Hold your tongue!" grunted Vologonov irritably.

For myself, I had, that day, been walking in the forest, until, as I
returned, I was brought up short before the windows of Felitzata's cot
by the fact that som