KASSYAN OF FAIR SPRINGS
their broad chests standing out under the strain. Of the two women who followed the coffin, one was very old and pale; her set face, terribly distorted as it was by grief, still kept an expression of grave and severe dignity. She walked in silence, from time to time lifting her wasted hand to her thin drawn lips. The other, a young woman of five-and-twenty, had her eyes red and moist and her whole face swollen with weeping; as she passed us she ceased wailing, and hid her face in her sleeve. . . . But when the funeral had got round us and turned again into the road, her piteous, heart-piercing lament began again. My coachman followed the measured swaying of the coffin with his eyes in silence. Then he turned to me.
'It's Martin, the carpenter, they're burying,' he said; 'Martin of Ryaby.'
'How do you know?'
'I know by the women. The old one is his mother, and the young one's his wife.'
'Has he been ill, then?'
'Yes . . . fever. The day before yesterday the overseer sent for the doctor, but they did not find the doctor at home. He was a good carpenter; he drank a bit, but he was a good carpenter. See how upset his good woman is. . . . But, there; women's tears don't cost much, we know. Women's tears are only water . . . yes, indeed.'
And he bent down, crept under the side-horse's trace, and seized the wooden yoke that passes over the horses' heads with both hands.
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