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“I have not slept,” he answered.

Suddenly a dark shadow crossed the window, and a minute later the girl Aksiutka quickly entered the room, exclaiming:

“The boyarinia commands you, Polikey Illitch, to come to her this moment!”

Polikey looked first at Akulina and then at the girl.

“This moment!” he cried. “What more is wanted?”

He spoke the last sentence so softly that Akulina became quieted in her mind, thinking that perhaps their mistress intended to reward her husband.

“Say that I will come immediately,” he said.

But Polikey failed to follow the girl, and went instead to another place.

From the porch of his house there was a ladder reaching to the attic. Arriving at the foot of the ladder Polikey looked around him, and seeing no one about, he quickly ascended to the garret.

* * * * * * *

Meanwhile the girl had reached her mistress’s house.

“What does it mean that Polikey does not come?” said the noblewoman impatiently. “Where can he be? Why does he not come at once?”

Aksiutka flew again to his house and demanded to see Polikey.

“He went a long time ago,” answered Akulina, and looking around with an expression of fear on her face, she added, “He may have fallen asleep somewhere on the way.”

About this time the joiner’s wife, with hair unkempt and clothes bedraggled, went up to the loft to gather the linen which she had previously put there to dry. Suddenly a cry of horror was heard, and the woman, with her eyes closed, and crazed by fear, ran down the ladder like a cat.

“Illitch,” she cried, “has hanged himself!”

Poor Akulina ran up the ladder before any of the people, who had gathered from the surrounding houses, could prevent her. With a loud shriek she fell back as if dead, and would surely have been killed had not one of the spectators succeeded in catching her in his arms.

Before dark the same day a peasant of the village, while returning from the town, found the envelope containing Polikey’s money on the roadside, and soon after delivered it to the boyarinia.