All repeated after him.
“We die for Thy pure love’s sake!”
Most pathetic was this human cry to God!
At this moment the soldiers, having surrounded the church, and climbed the ladders, began to demolish with their axes the thick log walls, the windows frames and doors.
The walls shook. The tapers fell, but every time chanced to miss the gunpowder troughs. Then at a sign from the old monk, Kirucha seized a bundle of tapers, burning before the icon of the Virgin, threw them into the gunpowder and jumped aside. The powder exploded, the fuel blazed up, streams of fire spread along the floor and walls. Thick smoke, first white, then black, filled the chapel, it choked the flames. Then fiery tongues alone pierced the smoke and hissing, like darts of serpents, approached the people, licked them and retreated as in play.
Terrible screams burst out. And through the groans of the sufferers, through the noise of the flame, continued the song of triumphant joy:—
“The Bridegroom cometh at midnight.”
Only two or three minutes passed between the kindling of the fire and Tichon losing his consciousness, yet what he saw, nothing could erase from his memory.
The old monk seized the newly-born infant, blessed it in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and threw her into the flames—the first victim.
John the Simpleton stretched his hands out towards the fire, as if to meet the coming Lord, whom he had been expecting all his life long.