Others joined this group. They stopped and described how a cannon ball had dropped on a house close to them. Meanwhile other projectiles—now a cannon ball, with rapid, ominous hiss, and now a grenade with a pleasant whistle—flew incessantly over the people’s heads: but not one fell close, all of them flew over. Alpatitch got into his gig. Ferapontov was standing at the gate.

“Will you never have done gaping!” he shouted to the cook, who in her red petticoat, with her sleeves tucked up and her bare elbows swinging, had stepped to the corner to listen to what was being said.

“A wonder it is!” she was saying, but hearing her master’s voice, she came back, pulling down her tucked- up skirt.

Again something hissed, but very close this time, like a bird swooping down; there was a flash of fire in the middle of the street, the sound of a shot, and the street was filled with smoke.

“Scoundrel, what are you about?” shouted Ferapontov, running up to the cook.

At the same instant there rose a piteous wailing from the women; the baby set up a terrified howling, and the people crowded with pale faces round the cook. Above them all rose out of the crowd the moans and cries of the cook.

“O-o-oy, good kind souls, blessed friends! don’t let me die! Good kind souls!…”

Five minutes later no one was left in the street. The cook, with her leg broken by the bursting grenade, had been carried into the kitchen. Alpatitch, his coachman, Ferapontov’s wife and children and the porter were sitting in the cellar listening. The thunder of the cannon, the hiss of the balls, and the piteous moaning of the cook, which rose above all the noise, never ceased for an instant. Ferapontov’s wife alternately dandled and soothed her baby, and asked in a frightened whisper of every one who came into the cellar where was her husband, who had remained in the street. The shopman told her the master had gone with the crowd to the cathedral, where they were raising on high the wonder-working, holy picture of Smolensk.

Towards dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatitch came out of the cellar and stood in the doorway.

The clear evening sky was all overcast with smoke. And a new crescent moon looked strange, shining high up in the sky, through that smoke. After the terrible thunder of the cannons had ceased, a hush seemed to hang over the town, broken only by the footsteps, which seemed all over the town, the sound of groans and distant shouts, and the crackle of fires. The cook’s moans had ceased now. On two sides black clouds of smoke from fires rose up and drifted away. Soldiers in different uniforms walked and ran about the streets in different directions, not in ranks, but like ants out of a disturbed ant heap. Several of them ran in Ferapontov’s yard before Alpatitch’s eyes. He went out to the gate. A regiment, crowded and hurrying, blocked up the street, going back.

“The town’s surrendered; get away, get away,” said an officer noticing his figure; and turning immediately to the soldiers, he shouted, “I’ll teach you to run through the yards!”

Alpatitch went back to the house, and calling the coachman told him to set off. Alpatitch and the coachman were followed out by all the household of Ferapontov. When they saw the smoke and even the flames of burning houses, which began to be visible now in the dusk, the women, who had been silent till then, broke into a sudden wail, as they gazed at the fires. As though seconding them, similar wails rose up in other parts of the street. Alpatitch and the coachman with trembling hands pulled out the tangled reins and the traces of the horses under the shed.

As Alpatitch was driving out of the gate, he saw about a dozen soldiers in loud conversation in Ferapontov’s open shop. They were filling their bags and knapsacks with wheaten flour and sunflower seeds. At that