Explore "Polikushka. a Story" by Leo Tolstoy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
For some minutes it was impossible to bring any order out of the general chaos. The people ran about in crowds, all screaming, all talking; children and old people weeping. Akulína lay in a dead faint. At last some peasants, the joiner, and the overseer, who came running up, mounted the stairs; and the joiner's wife for the twentieth time related how she, without any thought of any thing, went after her clothes, looked in this way: "I see a man; I look more close: there's a cap lying on one side. I see his legs twitching. Then a cold chill ran down my back. At last I make out a man hanging there, and... that I should have to see that! How ever I got down is more than I can tell. And it is a miracle that God saved me. Truly the Lord had mercy. It was so steep, and -- such a height! I might have got my death."
The men who went into the loft told the same story. Ilyitch was hanging from the beam, in his shirt and stockings alone, with the very rope that he had taken off from the cradle. His cap which had fallen off lay beside him. He had taken off his jacket and sheepskin shuba, and folded them neatly. His feet just touched the floor, and there was not a sign of life. Akulína came to herself, and tried to climb to the loft again; but they would not let her.