"Has your husband returned?" he asked.
But the woman only made a gesture with her hands, and without saying a word went her way.
Semyon had learnt when still a lad to make flutes out of a kind of reed.
He used to burn out the heart of the stalk, make holes where necessary, drill them, fix a mouthpiece at one end, and tune them so well that it was possible to play almost any air on them.
He made a number of them in his spare time, and sent them by his friends amongst the freight brakemen to the bazaar in the town. He got two kopeks apiece for them.
On the day following the visit of the commission he left his wife at home to meet the six o'clock train, and started off to the forest to cut some sticks.
He went to the end of his section--at this point the line made a sharp turn--descended the embankment, and struck into the wood at the foot of the mountain.
About half a verst away there was a big marsh, around which splendid reeds for his flutes grew.
He cut a whole bundle of stalks and started back home.
The sun was already dropping low, and in the dead stillness only the twittering of the birds was audible, and the crackle of the dead wood under his feet.
As he walked along rapidly, he fancied he heard the clang of iron striking iron, and he redoubled his pace.
There was no repair going on in his section.
What did it mean?
He emerged from the woods, the railway embankment stood high before him; on the top a man was squatting on the bed of the line busily engaged in something. Semyon commenced quietly to crawl up towards him. He thought it was some one after the nuts which secure the rails.
He watched, and the man got up, holding a crow-bar in his hand. He had loosened a rail, so that it would move to one side.
A mist swam before Semyon's eyes; he wanted to cry out, but could not.
It was Vasily! Semyon scrambled up the bank, as Vasily with crow-bar and wrench slid headlong down the other side.
"Vasily Stepanych!
My dear friend, come back!
Give me the crow-bar.
We will put the rail back; no one will know.
Come back! Save your soul from sin!"
Vasily did not look back, but disappeared into the woods.
Semyon stood before the rail which had been torn up. He threw down his bundle of sticks.
A train was due; not a freight, but a passenger-train.
And he had nothing with which to stop it, no flag.
He could not replace the rail and could not drive in the spikes with his bare hands.
It was necessary to run, absolutely necessary to run to the hut for some tools.
"God help me!" he murmured.
Semyon started running towards his hut.
He was out of breath, but still ran, falling every now and then.
He had cleared the forest; he was only a few hundred feet from his hut, not more, when he heard the distant hooter of the factory sound--six o'clock!
In two minutes' time No. 7 train was due.
"Oh, Lord!
Have pity on innocent souls!"
In his mind Semyon saw the engine strike against the loosened rail with its left wheel, shiver, careen, tear up and splinter the sleepers--and just there, there was a curve and the embankment seventy feet high, down which the engine would topple--and the third-class carriages would be packed ... little children...
All sitting in the train now, never dreaming of danger.
"Oh, Lord! Tell me what to do!...
No, it is impossible to run to the hut and get back in time."
Semyon did not run on to the hut, but turned back and ran faster than before.
He was running almost mechanically, blindly; he did not know himself what was to happen.
He ran as far as the rail which had been pulled up; his sticks were lying in a heap.
He bent down, seized one without knowing why, and ran on farther.
It seemed to him the train was already coming.
He heard the distant whistle; he heard the quiet, even tremor of the rails; but his strength was exhausted, he could run no farther, and came to a halt about six hundred feet from the awful spot. Then an idea came into his head, literally like a ray of light.
Pulling off his cap, he took out of it a cotton scarf, drew his knife out of the upper part of his boot, and crossed himself, muttering, "God bless me!"
He buried the knife in his left arm above the elbow; the blood spurted out, flowing in a hot stream. In this he soaked his scarf, smoothed it out, tied it to the stick and hung out his red flag.
He stood waving his flag. The train was already in sight.
The driver would not see him--would come close up, and a heavy train cannot be pulled up in six hundred feet.
And the blood kept on flowing. Semyon pressed the sides of the wound together so as to close it, but the blood did not diminish. Evidently he had cut his arm very deep.