"Put up with it, do you? you devil!" snarled Matiza.
Even Perfishka's crippled wife had crept out of the cellar and sat huddled up in rags in her usual place in the doorway. Her hands rested still on her knees; she held her head up and gazed at the sky with her dark eyes. Her lips were firmly pressed together, and the corners of her mouth drawn down. Ilya looked first at her dusky eyes, then, like her, at the sky, and thought to himself that perhaps Perfishka's wife saw the Lord God up there, and was silently praying for something.
By degrees all the children of the house collected by the cellar door. They pulled their clothes closer about them, and sat on the cellar steps pressed close together, listening with fearful curiosity to what Savel's son was telling them of the crime. Pashka's face was troubled, and his eyes, generally so saucy, looked uncertainly and waveringly round about him. But he felt himself the hero of the day; never had people paid him so much attention as to-day. Now for the tenth time he retold the same history, and his tale sounded quite indifferent, quite unmoved.
"When she went away yesterday, father gnashed his teeth, and raged more and more, and growled all the time. He pulled my hair every minute. I soon saw something was up, and then she came back. The house was shut up, we were in the smithy, and I was standing by the bellows. All at once I saw her come nearer, and stand in the door. 'Give me the key,' she said. But father took the tongs and went at her. He went quite slowly—creeping slowly. I shut my eyes, it was awful. I wanted to cry out 'Run, mother!' but I couldn't. When I looked again, he was still going slowly towards her, and his eyes burned! Then she tried to go—she turned her back—she tried to run——"
Pashka's face quivered and his thin angular body began to shudder. He drew in a deep breath, then breathed out again, and said:
"Then he hit her on the head with the tongs."
A movement ran through the children, who had not stirred hitherto.
"She stretched out her arms and fell forward, as if she were diving into the water."
He stopped speaking, picked up a shaving, looked at it carefully, and threw it away over the heads of the children. They all sat still, silent and motionless, as if they expected him to speak again. But he said no more, and let his head fall on to his breast.
"Did he kill her quite dead?" asked Masha in her thin, trembling voice.