They carried the coffin past her.
Nina pressed her lips to her brother's for the last time as they bore the coffin by her.
As Alyosha went out of the house he begged the landlady to look after those who were left behind, but she interrupted him before he had finished.
"To be sure, I'll stay with them, we are Christians, too." The old woman wept as she said it.
They had not far to carry the coffin to the church, not more than three hundred paces.
It was a still, clear day, with a slight frost.
The church bells were still ringing.
Snegiryov ran fussing and distracted after the coffin, in his short old summer overcoat, with his head bare and his soft, old, wide-brimmed hat in his hand.
He seemed in a state of bewildered anxiety. At one minute he stretched out his hand to support the head of the coffin and only hindered the bearers, at another he ran alongside and tried to find a place for himself there.
A flower fell on the snow and he rushed to pick it up as though everything in the world depended on the loss of that flower.
"And the crust of bread, we've forgotten the crust!" he cried suddenly in dismay.
But the boys reminded him at once that he had taken the crust of bread already and that it was in his pocket.
He instantly pulled it out and was reassured.
"Ilusha told me to, Ilusha," he explained at once to Alyosha. "I was sitting by him one night and he suddenly told me:
'Father, when my grave is filled up crumble a piece of bread on it so that the sparrows may fly down; I shall hear and it will cheer me up not to be lying alone.'"
"That's a good thing," said Alyosha, "we must often take some."
"Every day, every day!" said the captain quickly, seeming cheered at the thought.
They reached the church at last and set the coffin in the middle of it.
The boys surrounded it and remained reverently standing so, all through the service.
It was an old and rather poor church; many of the ikons were without settings; but such churches are the best for praying in.
During the mass Snegiryov became somewhat calmer, though at times he had outbursts of the same unconscious and, as it were, incoherent anxiety. At one moment he went up to the coffin to set straight the cover or the wreath, when a candle fell out of the candlestick he rushed to replace it and was a fearful time fumbling over it, then he subsided and stood quietly by the coffin with a look of blank uneasiness and perplexity.
After the Epistle he suddenly whispered to Alyosha, who was standing beside him, that the Epistle had not been read properly but did not explain what he meant.
During the prayer, "Like the Cherubim," he joined in the singing but did not go on to the end. Falling on his knees, he pressed his forehead to the stone floor and lay so for a long while.
At last came the funeral service itself and candles were distributed.
The distracted father began fussing about again, but the touching and impressive funeral prayers moved and roused his soul.
He seemed suddenly to shrink together and broke into rapid, short sobs, which he tried at first to smother, but at last he sobbed aloud.
When they began taking leave of the dead and closing the coffin, he flung his arms about, as though he would not allow them to cover Ilusha, and began greedily and persistently kissing his dead boy on the lips.
At last they succeeded in persuading him to come away from the step, but suddenly he impulsively stretched out his hand and snatched a few flowers from the coffin.
He looked at them and a new idea seemed to dawn upon him, so that he apparently forgot his grief for a minute.
Gradually he seemed to sink into brooding and did not resist when the coffin was lifted up and carried to the grave.
It was an expensive one in the churchyard close to the church, Katerina Ivanovna had paid for it.
After the customary rites the grave-diggers lowered the coffin.
Snegiryov with his flowers in his hands bent down so low over the open grave that the boys caught hold of his coat in alarm and pulled him back.
He did not seem to understand fully what was happening.
When they began filling up the grave, he suddenly pointed anxiously at the falling earth and began trying to say something, but no one could make out what he meant, and he stopped suddenly.
Then he was reminded that he must crumble the bread and he was awfully excited, snatched up the bread and began pulling it to pieces- and flinging the morsels on the grave.
"Come, fly down, birds, fly down, sparrows!" he muttered anxiously.
One of the boys observed that it was awkward for him to crumble the bread with the flowers in his hands and suggested he should give them to someone to hold for a time.
But he would not do this and seemed indeed suddenly alarmed for his flowers, as though they wanted to take them from him altogether. And after looking at the grave, and as it were, satisfying himself that everything had been done and the bread had been crumbled, he suddenly, to the surprise of everyone, turned, quite composedly even, and made his way homewards.
But his steps became more and more hurried, he almost ran.
The boys and Alyosha kept up with him.
"The flowers are for mamma, the flowers are for mamma!
I was unkind to mamma," he began exclaiming suddenly.
Someone called to him to put on his hat as it was cold. But he flung the hat in the snow as though he were angry and kept repeating,
"I won't have the hat, I won't have the hat."
Smurov picked it up and carried it after him.
All the boys were crying, and Kolya and the boy who discovered about Troy most of all. Though Smurov, with the captain's hat in his hand, was crying bitterly too, he managed, as he ran, to snatch up a piece of red brick that lay on the snow of the path, to fling it at the flock of sparrows that was flying by.
He missed them, of course, and went on crying as he ran.
Half-way, Snegiryov suddenly stopped, stood still for half a minute, as though struck by something, and suddenly turning back to the church, ran towards the deserted grave.
But the boys instantly overtook him and caught hold of him on all sides.