"The Lord is good to us, Ilya! Don't be frightened any more! I've found uncle Petrusha straight off. There--catch--get your teeth into that!" and he held out a cake to Ilya.
The boy took it almost reverently, put it inside his shirt, and asked anxiously:
"They'll let us in this very minute.... The ferry-boats will come and then we'll get over the river."
"Oh! and I thought they'd never let us in--and where shall we live over there?"
"I don't know yet. The Lord will show us the way."
"Perhaps we'll live in the big house there with the red----"
"Oh! you silly boy; that's the barracks where the soldiers live."
"That doesn't matter," said Ilya, in a tone of conviction. "We'll manage to crawl up to it."
"Oh you----!" sighed uncle Terenti, and disappeared again somewhere.
They found shelter, quite at the end of the town, near the market-place, in a big grey house; all round its walls leant outbuildings of every kind, some comparatively recent, others as old as the house itself, and of the same dirty grey colour. The doors and windows were warped, and everything in the house creaked and cracked. The outbuildings, the fence, the gates, everything was falling to pieces together, and the whole formed a mass of half-rotten wood overgrown with greenish moss. The window panes were dim with age; a couple of beams in the front wall bulged right out, and altogether the house was an image of its owner, who used it as a tavern. He, too, was old and grey; the eyes in his worn face were like the glass panes in the windows; as he walked, he leant heavily on a thick staff--evidently it was not easy for him to carry his big paunch--and he, too, creaked and cracked all the time.
Uncle Terenti established himself in one of the countless corners of the building--in a cellar, on a bench by a window opening on a corner of the courtyard. In this corner lay a great rubbish heap, and an old sweet-scented lime tree stood there between two elder bushes. It was three days after their arrival before the proprietor of the house noticed Ilya for the first time, as he tried to hide behind the rubbish heap and stared with terrified eyes.
"Where do you belong, youngster? Hey!" he asked in his creaking voice, pointing at Ilya with his stick. "How did you come here? Hey!"