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"Come, go to sleep, go to sleep!..." "I tell you I am frightened!" "What are you frightened of? What a baby!" They were silent. Alyoshka suddenly jumped out of the sledge and, loudly weeping, ran to his grandfather. "What is it? What's the matter?" cried the coachman in a fright, getting up also. "He's howling!" "Who is howling?" "I am frightened, grandfather, do you hear?" The coachman listened.
"The time will come and we shall die too," said the porter, walking away with the fish-hawker, and at once they both vanished from sight in the darkness. The coachman, and Alyoshka after him, somewhat timidly went up to the lighted windows.
Fyodor's wife, Sofya, a plain, ailing woman, lives at home at her father-in-law's. She is for ever crying, and every Sunday she goes over to the hospital for medicine. Dyudya's second son, the hunchback Alyoshka, is living at home at his father's. He has only lately been married to Varvara, whom they singled out for him from a poor family. She is a handsome young woman, smart and buxom.
"I suppose the doctors have come again," said the coachman. "Our Mihailo is run off his legs...." A strange wailing voice rang out for a moment in the air. Alyoshka looked in alarm at his grandfather, the coachman; then at the windows, and said: "He stroked me on the head at the gate yesterday, and said, 'What district do you come from, boy? Grandfather, who was that howled just now?"
From time to time the strains of mu sic floated faintly from the end of the street Alyoshka, most likely, playing his concertina. Someone moved in the shadow near the church enclosure, and Sofya could not make out whether it were a man or a cow, or perhaps merely a big bird rustling in the trees.
All except Alyoshka, who was absorbed in the game, looked round at the brightly lighted windows of the lodge. "I have orders to go to the police station tomorrow," said the porter. "There will be an inquiry... But what do I know about it? I saw nothing of it. He called me this morning, gave me a letter, and said: 'Put it in the letter-box for me. And his eyes were red with crying.
Alyoshka shuddered, and pressed his face to the coachman's back so as not to see the windows. "At first the General's lady would not listen," continued the old man. "'All this is your fancy, you simple folk have such notions, she said. 'A dead man cannot howl. Some time afterwards the watchmen came to her again, and with them the sacristan. So the sacristan, too, had heard him howling.
The coachman fumbled for the matches and lighted the lantern. But the light did not comfort Alyoshka. "Grandfather Stepan, let's go to the village!" he besought him, weeping. "I am frightened here; oh, oh, how frightened I am! And why did you bring me from the village, accursed man?" "Who's an accursed man? You mustn't use such disrespectable words to your lawful grandfather. I shall whip you."
Both were quiet and soon they fell asleep. Earlier than all woke the old woman. She waked up Sofya and they went together into the cowshed to milk the cows. The hunchback Alyoshka came in hopelessly drunk without his concertina; his breast and knees had been in the dust and straw he must have fallen down in the road.
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