They all laughed at Stepan, and after supper they separated to go to
bed.

Meanwhile, at that very time, a gigantic figure with a bag on his
shoulders and a stick in his hand, was eagerly and persistently stepping
out along the T--- high-road. It was Gerasim. He was hurrying on without
looking round; hurrying homewards, to his own village, to his own country.
After drowning poor Mumu, he had run back to his garret, hurriedly packed
a few things together in an old horsecloth, tied it up in a bundle,
tossed it on his shoulder, and so was ready. He had noticed the road
carefully when he was brought to Moscow; the village his mistress had
taken him from lay only about twenty miles off the high-road. He walked
along it with a sort of invincible purpose, a desperate and at the same
time joyous determination. He walked, his shoulders thrown back and his
chest expanded; his eyes were fixed greedily straight before him. He
hastened as though his old mother were waiting for him at home, as though
she were calling him to her after long wanderings in strange parts,
among strangers. The summer night, that was just drawing in, was still
and warm; on one side, where the sun had set, the horizon was still light
and faintly flushed with the last glow of the vanished day; on the other
side a blue-gray twilight had already risen up. The night was coming up
from that quarter. Quails were in hundreds around; corncrakes were
calling to one another in the thickets. . . . Gerasim could not hear them;
he could not hear the delicate night-whispering of the trees, by which his
strong legs carried him, but he smelt the familiar scent of the ripening
rye, which was wafted from the dark fields; he felt the wind, flying to
meet him--the wind from home--beat caressingly upon his face, and play
with his hair and his beard. He saw before him the whitening road
homewards, straight as an arrow. He saw in the sky stars innumerable,