Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/83



ORIS TIMOFEICH ate mushrooms with gruel for supper; he got a heart-burn from it. Then suddenly he had pains in the pit of the stomach, terrible vomitings began and he died before morning. He died just like the rats in his granary, for which Katerina Lvovna had always prepared, with her own hands, a certain kind of food made of a dangerous white powder that had been entrusted to her.

Katerina Lvovna let Sergei out of the old man's store-room and brazenly laid him publicly in her husband's bed to recover from the blows that her father-in-law had inflicted on him. Her father-in-law was buried according to the rites of the Christian Church. Nobody was surprised at this strange occurrence. Boris Timofeich was dead, and had died after eating mushrooms, as many die after eating them. Boris Timofeich was buried hurriedly without waiting for his son to arrive; it was very hot weather, and the messenger who had been sent to him did not find Zinovey Borisych at the mill. He had heard of a forest that was for