His hands fluttered anxiously and he seemed to be listening for a reply.
"Eh, hey," he spoke again. "No one is groaning; it is the noise of the storm in the forest. That is all; it is the forest murmuring, murmuring——"
A few minutes passed. Bluish flashes of lightning stared every second or two into the little window, and the tall, fantastic forms of the pines kept springing out of the darkness and vanishing again into the angry heart of the storm. Suddenly a brilliant light dimmed the pale flame of the tallow-dip and a sharp, near-by peal of thunder crashed over the forest.
The old man again moved anxiously on his bench.
"Aksana, dear Aksana, who is that shooting with a gun?"
"Go to sleep, grandfather, go to sleep," I heard Motria's quiet voice answer from her place on the stove. "It's always like this. He always calls Aksana if there's a storm at night. He forgets that Aksana has long been dead. Okh—ho!"
Motria yawned, whispered a prayer, and silence fell once more in the hut, broken only by the noise of the forest and the old man's anxious whispering:
"The forest is murmuring, the forest is murmuring—dear Aksana—"
Soon a heavy rain began to fall, drowning with its descending torrents the groans of the pines.
