CHAPTER VIII
On the day Peter Avdeev died in the hospital at Vozdvizhensk, his old father with the wife of the brother in whose stead he had enlisted, and that brother’s daughter — who was already approaching womanhood and almost of age to get married — were threshing oats on the hard-frozen threshing floor.
There had been a heavy fall of snow the previous night followed towards morning by a severe front. The old man woke when the c***s were crowing for the third time, and seeing the bright moonlight through the frozen windowpanes got down from the stove, put on his boots, his sheepskin coat and cap, and went out to the threshing floor. Having worked there for a couple of hours he returned to the hut and awoke his son and the women. When the woman and girl came to the threshing floor the
