“Be sure it’s by way of a prophecy,” said someone in the crowd.
“Another pound for her, another!” Semyon Yakovlevitch persisted.
There was a whole sugar-loaf still on the table, but the saint ordered a pound to be given, and they gave her a pound.
“Lord have mercy on us!” gasped the people, crossing themselves. “It’s surely a prophecy.”
“Sweeten your heart for the future with mercy and loving kindness, and then come to make complaints against your own children; bone of your bone. That’s what we must take this emblem to mean,” the stout monk from the monastery, who had had no tea given to him, said softly but self-complacently, taking upon himself the rôle of interpreter in an access of wounded vanity.
“What are you saying, father?” cried the widow, suddenly infuriated. “Why, they dragged me into the fire with a rope round me when the Verhishins’ house was burnt, and they locked up a dead cat in my chest. They are ready to do any villainy.…”
“Away with her! Away with her!” Semyon Yakovlevitch said suddenly, waving his hands.
The verger and the boy dashed through the partition. The verger took the widow by the arm, and without resisting she trailed to the door, keeping her eyes fixed on the loaves of sugar that had been bestowed on her, which the boy dragged after her.
“One to be taken away. Take it away,” Semyon Yakovlevitch commanded to the servant like a workman, who remained with him. The latter rushed after the retreating woman, and the three servants returned somewhat later bringing back one loaf of sugar which had been presented to the widow and now taken away from her. She carried off three, however.
“Semyon Yakovlevitch,” said a voice at the door. “I dreamt of a bird, a jackdaw; it flew out of the water and flew into the fire. What does the dream mean?”