The light of the fire was reflected from the golden ground of the image, and that reflection fell upon the face of the voevoda and made it cheerful so that never had it seemed so calm.
Kharlamp sat at the side of the body, and resting his elbows on his knees, hid his face in his hands.
The silence was broken only by the sound of shots.
All at once something terrible took place. First of all was a flash of awful brightness; the whole world seemed turned into fire, and at the same time there was given forth such a sound as if the earth had fallen from under the castle. The walls tottered; the ceilings cracked with a terrible noise; all the windows tumbled in on the floor, and the panes were broken into hundreds of fragments. Through the empty openings of the windows that moment clouds of snow drifted in, and the whirlwind began to howl gloomily in the corners of the chamber.
All the people present fell to the floor on their faces, speechless from terror.
Kharlamp rose first, and looked directly on the corpse of the voevoda; the corpse was lying in calmness, but the gilded image had slipped a little in the hands.
Kharlamp recovered his breath. At first he felt certain that that was an army of Satans who had broken into the chamber for the body of the prince.
“The word has become flesh!” said he. “The Swedes must have blown up the tower and themselves.”
But from without there came no sound. Evidently the troops of Sapyeha were standing in dumb wonder, or perhaps in fear that the whole castle was mined, and that there would be explosion after explosion.
“Put wood on the fire!” said Kharlamp to the pages.