ten o’clock in the evening
Bluish smoke coiled up from the censer and bathed in the broad , slanting patch of sunshine which cut across the gloomy , lifeless emptiness of the church . And it seemed as though the soul of the dead woman were soaring into the sunlight together with the smoke . The coils of smoke like a child 's curls eddied round and round , floating upwards to the window and , as it were , holding aloof from the woes and tribulations of which that poor soul was full . IT was between nine and ten o'clock in the evening . Stepan the coachman , Mihailo the house-porter , Alyoshka the coachman 's grandson , who had come up from the village to stay with his grandfather , and Nikandr , an old man of seventy , who used to come into the yard every evening to sell salt herrings , were sitting round a lantern in the big coach-house , playing `` kings . '' Through the wide-open door could be seen the whole yard , the big house , where the master 's family lived , the gates , the cellars , and the porter 's lodge . It was all shrouded in the darkness of night , and only the four windows of one of the lodges which was let were brightly lit up .