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130
A Day in a Famine-Stricken Village.
a longtime lie tries to use the most difficult words in the hope
of winning my favour. I write down his name and dismiss
him.
A woman comes in sobbing. " My little father—I come to
you-"
" What do you want ? "
"My husband is very ill—his body is beginning to swell—he
cannot climb down from the oven. Yesterday I heard that
your grace gives medicine. Help us, little father, for Christ’s
■sake ! I have tried everything already ; I have covered him
with cow-dung, given him cherry-balsam, sprinkled him with
holy water. Some time ago, little father, I had a visit
from the monks of Atlion monastery, who went through the
villages with holy pictures, and I begged a small bottle of holy
water from them. I got half a mera of rye from them, hardly
worth a thank-you, but nothing is any good."
" Where do you live ? "
" Little father, I live near the small stream, in the narrow
lane, the third hut. First, there is an izba, with a board roof,
then a wattled fence, and our little zemlianJccc (earthen hut),
with a small window towards the yard, very poor. Come, little
good-giver."
I promise I will, and enter her name.
Then come several others, each with a special request.
I go for a while to get tea with my landlady, and then go out.
The sun is already high, and it is nearly noon. The frozen
earth has thawed, small brooklets are purling along, beginning
their day’s work, carrying the dirty, melted snow to larger
streams, which here and there are making their way beneath
the snow. The pools in the village streets are still sheeted
with thin layers of ice, with small openings here and there from
which cracks radiate in all directions. I walk by the side of a wide
brook that rushes down a hill until it loses itself in a pool; this
has already overflowed its banks, over which it foams along in
a small cataract. Across it are seen two small huts, and beyond
the boundless steppe, rising with gentle slope until in the far
distance it meets the infinite heavens. As I gaze over the plains
I discover some black spots moving. Looking more closely I see
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