Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/253

Rh So Simon went on, and the stranger never left him, but kept alongside of him. The wind arose and found its way beneath Simon's shirt; the drink he had taken was now pretty well out of him, and he began to feel freezing cold. On he went, snuffling loudly and wrapping his old woman's jacket more closely around him, and he thought to himself: "That's what thy sheep-skin has brought thee to. Thou didst go for a pelisse, and dost return even without a kaftan, and dost bring a naked man home with thee to boot. Thy Matrena will not bless thee for it!"

And the moment he fell to thinking of Matrena, he grew uncomfortable. But when he looked at the stranger he bethought him of how the man had looked at him at the chapel, and his heart leaped up within him.

Simon's wife was up early. She chopped, up the firewood, brought the water, fed the children, took a bit herself, and began to think: "When shall I make the bread, now or to-morrow?" A big slice still remained.

"If Simon has had something to eat down yonder," she thought, "and doesn't eat much for supper, there will be enough bread to go on with till to-morrow."

Matrena kept turning the piece of bread round and round, and she thought: "I won't make the bread now. There's only enough meal left for one loaf. We can manage to get along till Friday." 203