They walked quickly upon the Navii path like gliding, nocturnal shadows, one after another, the whole ten of them, with Grisha leading. The dew fell upon their naked feet, and the ground under their feet was soft, warm, and sad.
Egorka awoke in his grave. It was dark and somewhat stuffy. His head felt oppressed as under a weight. There sounded in his ears the persistent call:
“Rise, come to me.”
Fear assailed him. His eyes looked but did not see. It was hard to breathe. He recalled something, and all that he recalled was like a horrible delirium. Then came the sudden awful realization:
“I am in a grave, in a coffin.”
He groaned, and his heart began to thump. His throat, as if clutched by some one’s fingers, shivered convulsively. His eyes dilated widely, and the flaming darkness of the nailed-up coffin swept before them. As he tossed about in the tight coffin, tormented by his dread, Egorka moaned, and whispered in a dull voice:
“Three house-sprites, three wood-sprites, three fallen sprites!”
The gate to the burial-ground was open. Trirodov and the children entered. They were among the poor graves—simple little mounds and wooden crosses. It was gloomy, damp, and quiet. There was a smell of grass—a graveyard reverie. The crosses gleamed white in the mist. A poignant silence hovered there, and the whole cemetery seemed filled with the dark reverie of the dead. Poignant feelings were re-experienced deliciously and painfully.
Nowhere does the soil feel so near to one as in a graveyard—it is the sacred soil of repose. They walked quietly, the whole ten of them, one after another, and felt the coolness and the softness of the ground under their bare feet. They passed near a grave. The little mound was quiet and poor, and it seemed as if the earth were crying, wailing, and suffering.
The boys, dimly discernible in the darkness against the lumps of black earth, began to dig the grave. The little girls stood very quietly, one at each of the four sides, and seemed engrossed in the nocturnal silence. The watchmen slept like the dead, and the dead slept, keeping a powerless watch over their graves.