THREE MEN (continued 2)

"What is the matter? What is it?" called out his uncle frightened, and put an arm round him. But Ilya pushed him back, and spoke in a voice choked with tears, but ringing with bitter pain and horror.

"O God! If only I could go away and hide from it all. O God!"

He could not speak for tears. His breathing was laboured in the heavy air of the tap room, and, sobbing, he hid his face on the floor.

VI.

Ilya's character underwent a great change as a result of these experiences. Formerly it was only from his school fellows that he had held aloof, as he had never become accustomed to their behaviour towards him or felt the smallest inclination to yield to it. In the house, on the contrary, he had always been frank and trustful, and had felt a singular joy, if any one of the grown-up people took any notice of him. Now, however, he kept away from every one, and grew serious beyond his years. His face wore an unfriendly expression, his lips were compressed, he observed his elders with attention and listened to their conversations with a searching look in his eyes. The memory of all he saw on the day that old Jeremy died weighed heavy on him, and it seemed to him that not only Petrusha and his uncle, but also he himself was guilty before the old man. Perhaps Jeremy had thought as he lay there dying and saw his store rifled, that he, Ilya, had betrayed the treasure. This fear had arisen in Ilya quite suddenly, but had grown in strength and filled his soul with doubt and torturing pain. He locked his thoughts in his heart and thereby there grew in him a mistrust of all the world, and as often as he noticed anything wicked in any one, his heart was a little easier, as though his own guilt towards the dead were lessened thereby. And he found so much evil among men and women. Every one called Petrusha a hypocrite and a liar, but all flattered him to his face, bowed respectfully to him, and addressed him with humility as Peter Akimytsch. Every one called big Matiza of the attics by a hateful name; when she was drunk they all pushed or struck her, and once as she sat below the kitchen window, the cook poured a pail of dirty water right over her, and yet they all took from her endless small kindnesses and services, and gave her no thanks but foul names and blows. Perfishka would call her to watch his ailing wife, Petrusha would get her to wash down the bar room before holidays for nothing, and she was always mending shirts for Terenti. She went everywhere and did everything without a complaint and very handily, tended the sick devotedly and loved to play with the children.

Ilya saw that the most hard-working man in the whole house, the cobbler Perfishka, was looked upon universally as a ridiculous figure, and that no notice was taken of him except when he sat on the bench in the bar room with his harmonica, half drunk, or reeled about the courtyard singing his jolly little songs.

No one could see how carefully he carried his crippled wife up the stairs, how he put his little daughter to bed, tucked her in, and made all sorts of droll faces to entertain her. No one noticed him when he taught Masha, with laughter and fun, to cook the dinner and clean the room, then settled to his work, sitting far into the night bent over a dirty shapeless boot.

When the smith was taken off to prison, no one but the cobbler troubled about his boy. But he took Pashka at once, and the unruly lad waxed the thread, swept the room, fetched water, and went to the shop for bread, kvass and onions. Every one had seen the cobbler drunk on holidays, but no one heard him next day, when, sober once more, he excused himself to his wife:

"Forgive me, Dunya, I'm not really a drunkard, I only took a mouthful to cheer me up. I work all the week—it's very weary, and then I just go and have a drink, and——"

"But do I complain of you? My God, I'm only so sorry for you," answered his wife in her hoarse voice, that sounded like a sob in her throat. "D'you think I don't see how you slave? The Lord has put me like a heavy stone round your neck. If only I could die! then you'd be free of me!"

"Don't talk like that! I won't have you say such things. It's I who trouble you, and not you, me, but I don't do it out of wickedness, only I'm so weak. See now, we'll move into another street. Everything shall be different, door and windows and everything. The windows shall look out on the street, and we'll cut out a boot in paper and stick it on them. That'll be our sign. Everybody will come to us in a crowd, and the business will flourish. Ah! then! work—work—that's the way to fill the cupboard!"

Ilya knew every detail of Perfishka's life. He saw how he toiled like a fish that tries to break the ice closing round it, and respected him the more because he jested all the time with every one and had a smile for all occasions, and played so beautifully on the harmonica.

Meanwhile Petrusha sat behind the bar, played cards with an acquaintance now and again, drank tea from morning to night, and scolded the lads who waited on the customers. Soon after Jeremy's death he installed Terenti as barman, while he amused himself by strolling about the court whistling, observing the house from all sides and tapping the walls with his fists.

Ilya observed many other things, and everything was hateful and depressing, and repelled him from his fellows more and more. Sometimes all the thoughts and impressions that accumulated in him roused a strong desire to pour out his soul to some one. But he had no desire to talk to his uncle. After the death of Jeremy, there grew up as it were an invisible wall between them, which prevented the boy from approaching Terenti as often and as frankly as before. Even Jakov could throw little, if any, light for him on the experiences of his soul; for he lived apart from every one in his own special way. The death of old Jeremy troubled him, he often thought sadly.

"How dull everything is—if only grandfather Jeremy was alive, he used to tell us stories; there's nothing so nice as stories, and he could tell them so well."

"He could do everything well," answered Ilya gloomily.

One day Jakov said to his friend, mysteriously:

"Shall I show you something? Shall I?"

"Yes—do."

"But promise you'll never say a word."

"I promise."

"Say—may I be damned in Hell, if I do."

Ilya repeated the formula, whereupon Jakov led him to the old lime-tree in the furthest corner of the courtyard. There he lifted from the stem a strip of bark, cunningly fastened, and behind it Ilya saw a big hollow in the tree. It was a space cleverly scooped out with a knife, and adorned with gay rags, scraps of paper, and bits of tin foil. In the depth of the hollow stood a small figure, cast in bronze, and a wax candle end was fixed upright before it.

"Did you see it?" asked Jakov, putting the bark again over the opening.

"Yes, I saw. What is it?"

"It's a chapel," explained Jakov. "At night I can always come out very quietly and light the candle and pray. Isn't it beautiful?"

Ilya liked his friend's idea, but at once perceived the danger.

"Suppose any one saw the light. You'd get a fine thrashing!"

"Who's going to see it in the night? They're all asleep, the world is all quiet. I'm very little and God can't hear my prayer at the end of the day, but He'll hear it at night when it's quiet, don't you think?"

"I don't know, perhaps He will," said Ilya thoughtfully, looking into the pale, big-eyed face of his comrade.

"And you? Will you come and pray too?"

"What will you pray for?" asked Ilya. "I should ask God to make me very clever, and after that, to give me everything I want. What will you ask for?"

"I? I should ask for that too," answered Jakov. After a moment he added: "I should just pray without asking for anything special, just pray, that's all, and He can give what He likes, but if you think the other way's better, then I'll do the same as you."

"All right," said Ilya.

They decided to start praying the next night at the lime-tree, and both went to bed firmly determined to wake and meet at the corner. But neither then nor on the following night could they wake, and they overslept on many other occasions; then new impressions came to bear on Ilya and the thought of the chapel fell into the background.

In the twigs of this same lime-tree where Jakov had established his chapel, Pashka set bird snares, to catch finches and siskins. He had grown clumsy and thin, and his eyes looked this way and that like the eyes of a beast of prey. He had now no time to loaf about the court. He was kept busy with Perfishka all day, and the friends only saw him on holidays, when the cobbler was drunk. Pashka used to ask them what they were learning at school, and would look gloomy and envious when they gave accounts coloured with a consciousness of their superiority.

"You needn't be so stuck up, anyhow," he said once. "I'll learn something, too, some day."

"But Perfishka won't let you."

"Then I'll run away," answered Pashka, shortly and decidedly.

And as a matter of fact soon after this speech the cobbler went round the courtyard saying with a laugh:

"My young companion has run away, the young devil! Couldn't get on with my leather science!"

It was a rainy day. Ilya looked at the worried cobbler and then at the dull grey skies, and felt pity for the froward Pashka who might now be wandering God knows where. He stood by Perfishka under a shed, leant against the wall and looked across at the house. It seemed to him that day by day it became lower, as though it were sinking into the earth under the burden of the years. Its old ribs stood out more and more sharply, as though the dirt that had accumulated within them for years could no longer find room, and were pushing them asunder. Saturated with misery, wild riot and mournful drunken songs its only abundance, pounded and bruised by never-ceasing footsteps, the house could no longer endure its life, and slowly crumbled to decay, while its dim windows stared mournfully upon God's world.

"Heigh-ho!" began the cobbler, "the old shop'll soon smash up and strew its spawn over the earth, and we that live in it, we'll scatter to the four winds, we'll seek out new holes somewhere else—we'll soon find 'em, as good as these. Then we'll begin a new life—new windows and new doors, and new bugs to bite us. Well, let's have it soon, I've had enough of this pig-sty—only in the end one gets used to it, devil take it!"

But the shoemaker's dream was not to be fulfilled. The house did not crumble down, but was bought by Petrusha. As soon as the sale was complete, Petrusha spent two days creeping into every hole and corner, and feeling and testing the old box of rubbish. Then came bricks and boards, scaffolding surrounded the whole house, and for three months on end it creaked and quivered under the blows of the workmen's hatchets. All round there was sawing and chopping, nails were driven in, old beams torn out with loud crackings and whirls of dust, and new ones put in the places, till at last the old shanty had received a new clothing of planks, and its façade was widened by a new outbuilding. Broad and thickset, the house rose now from the ground straight and sturdy, as though it had driven new roots far into the earth; along its front just below the roof, Petrusha had a big hanging sign put up, which bore the statement in golden letters on a blue ground:

"The Jolly Companions Tavern, P. S. Filimonov."

"And inside it's rotten through and through," said Perfishka mockingly.

Ilya, to whom he made this comment, smiled in sympathy. To him, too, this house, after its rebuilding, seemed a gigantic fraud. He remembered Pashka, who must now be living in another place, and seeing quite different things.

Ilya dreamed, like the cobbler, of other doors and windows and men. Now life in the house became even more unpleasant than before. The old lime-tree fell a victim to the axe, the intimate little corner in its shadow disappeared, and a new outbuilding occupied its place, and all the other favourite places where the children used to sit together and chatter, existed no longer. Only where once the smithy stood, there was one quiet little corner left, behind a heap of old chips and rotten wood. But to sit there was to court uncanny feelings, as though beneath the pile of wood lay Savel's wife with a shattered skull.

Petrusha set aside a new place for Terenti—a tiny little room next the big bar room. Through the thin partition with green paper penetrated all the noise, the smell of brandy and the reek of tobacco. It was clean and dry in Terenti's new room, and yet it was more uncomfortable there than in the cellar. The window looked on the grey wall of the shed, which concealed the sky with the sun and stars, whereas, from the old cellar window, any one kneeling down could see them all quite easily.

Terenti henceforth wore a lilac-coloured shirt, and over it a coat that hung on him as it might have done over a box. From early morning till late at night he took his place behind the bar. He spoke distantly now to every one and held few conversations, and these in a dull, snappy way, as though he were barking, and looked at his acquaintances across the counter with the eyes of a faithful dog that guards his master's property. He bought Ilya a grey cloth jacket, boots, an overcoat, and a cap. When the lad put them on for the first time, the memory of the old rag-picker came vividly before him. He hardly ever spoke to his uncle and his life passed by, monotonous and still; and although the unusual unchildlike feelings and thoughts which had grown in him kept his mind busy, he was burdened with the weight of a suffocating dreariness. More and more often his thoughts turned back to the village. Now it seemed to him quite clear and definite, how much better it had been to live there. Everything there was quieter, simpler, more intelligible. He remembered the dense woods of Kerschenez, and his uncle's tales of the hermit Antipa, and the thought of Antipa aroused the memory of another lonely soul—of Pashka. Where was he now? Perhaps he, too, had fled to the woods, and there dug out a cave to live in. The storm-wind rages through the forest, the wolves howl; it is so terrifying, and yet so good to listen. And in the winter everything shines in the sun like silver, and all is so still, so quiet, that nothing can be heard but the crunch of the snow under foot, and if you stand a moment motionless, you hear only the beating of your own heart. But in the town, it is always wild and noisy, and even the night is filled with clamour. Men sing songs, shout for the police, groan aloud, the carriages pass to and fro, and shake the window-panes with their rattling. Even in school there is much the same confusion; the boys cry out and do all sorts of mischief, and the grown-up people in the streets roar and insult one another and fight and get drunk. And all this not only causes unrest, at times it is absolutely horrible. Mankind here is mad, some are liars, like Petrusha, some evil-tempered and passionate like Savel, others miserably wretched like Perfishka or Uncle Terenti or Matiza. Ilya was specially surprised and provoked at the hateful conduct which the cobbler had lately displayed.

One morning, as Ilya was getting ready for school, Perfishka came into the bar, all dishevelled and heavy with want of sleep. He stood silently at the counter and looked at Terenti. His left eyelid quivered and blinked constantly and his underlip hung down in a strange manner. Terenti looked at him, smiled, and poured him out a small glass, three kopecks worth, Perfishka's usual morning allowance.

Perfishka took it with a shaking hand and tossed it off, but neither smacked his lips after it as usual, nor showed his approval by an oath, and forgot entirely to take his accustomed morsel of food. With his blinking left eye he looked once more at the new barman searchingly, while his right eye remained dull and motionless and seemed to see nothing.

"What's wrong with your eye?" asked Terenti.

Perfishka rubbed his eye with his hand, then looked at his hand and said loudly and emphatically:

"My wife, Avdotya Petrovna is dead."

"What? Truly?" asked Terenti, crossing himself with a glance at the sacred image. "The Lord have mercy on her soul!"

"Eh?" said Perfishka sharply, still gazing into Terenti's face.

"I said, 'The Lord have mercy on her soul!'"

"Oh!—yes—yes! She is dead," said the cobbler. Then he turned suddenly on his heel and went out.

"A strange man," muttered Terenti, shaking his head. Ilya, too, found the cobbler's behaviour very strange. On his way to school he went for a moment into the cellar to see the dead woman. It was all dark and stuffy; the women had come from the attics and were talking half aloud in a group round the death-bed. Matiza was dressing the little Masha and asked her:

"Does it catch you under the arm?"

And Masha, standing with her arms stretched out sideways said crossly:

"Yes—ye—es!"

The cobbler sat bent forward at the table and looked at his daughter, his eye blinking all the time. Ilya gave a glance at the pale, swollen face of the dead; he remembered her dark eyes, now closed for ever, and went out with a painful gnawing feeling at his heart.

When he returned from school and went into the bar room, he heard Perfishka playing the harmonica and singing in a merry tone:

"Ah, my bride, my only dear, My heart is gone, I sadly fear, Why have you stolen it away, And where on earth is it to-day?"

"Oh yes! the women have turned me out!—get out, you villain, they screamed—old tippler, they called me. But I don't mind a bit. I'm a patient lamb. Blackguard me as much as you like, hit me if you like. Only let me live a little—just a little if you please. Aha! my brothers, every man likes to enjoy his life, eh? Call it Vaska, call it Jakov, the soul's the same all the time."

"Tell me who is weeping there? What does he want, in this affair? Be still my friend and don't complain, But stuff your mouth with bread again."

Perfishka's face wore an expression of idiotic happiness. Ilya looked at him and felt disgust and fear. He thought in his heart that without a doubt God would punish the cobbler heavily for such behaviour on the day of his wife's death. But Perfishka was drunk the next day too, even behind his wife's coffin he reeled as he walked and winked and laughed. All held his conduct blameworthy, he was even struck in the face.

"Do you know," said Ilya to Jakov the day of the funeral, "Perfishka is a downright unbeliever!"

"Oh! bother him!" answered Jakov indifferently.

Ilya had noticed already that Jakov had altered considerably. He hardly ever appeared in the courtyard, but sat indoors all the time and seemed to take pains to avoid Ilya. At first Ilya thought that Jakov envied him his success at school and was sitting indoors over his school work. But he soon showed that he learned with even more difficulty than before; constantly his teacher had to reprove him for his inattention and his failure to understand the simplest things. Ilya did not wonder at Jakov's indifference over Perfishka, for Jakov took no special interest in the affairs of the house, but he did wish to understand what was passing in his friend's mind and he asked him:

"Why are you so down on me now? Don't you want to be friends?"

"I? Not be your friend? What on earth are you saying?" said Jakov taken aback, and then called quickly with an eager expression:

"See now, go into the house. I'm coming in a moment—I'll show you."

He jumped up and ran off, while Ilya went to his room in great perplexity.

Jakov soon appeared. He closed the door behind him, went to the window, and took a red book from his coat pocket.

"Come here!" he said, softly, with an important air, sitting down on Terenti's bed and making room for Ilya beside him. Then he opened the book, laid it on his knee, bent over it and began to read aloud, following the words along the grey paper with his finger:

"And sudden—suddenly the bold knight saw a mountain a long way off, so high that it reached to heaven, and midway up its slope was an iron tower. There the fire of his courage flamed up in his brave heart. He put his lance in rest and charged forward with a mighty shout, and sp—spurring his horse, he rushed with all his-gi—gigantic strength against the door. There was a—fearful clap of thunder—the iron tower flew into fragments, and at the same time there streamed out of the mountain fire and v—va—vapour, and a voice of thunder was heard, at which the earth trembled and the stones rolled from the mountain down to the horse's feet. 'Ha! Ha! Is it thou, bold madcap. Death and I have long awaited thee.' The knight was blinded with the fire and smoke."

"But who—who is this?" asked Ilya, amazed at the excitement that quivered in his friend's voice.

"What?" said Jakov, lifting his pale face from the book.

"Who is this—this knight?"

"He's a man, that rides a horse, with a spear, his name is Raoul the Fearless—a dragon has carried off his bride, the beautiful Louise—but listen," Jakov broke off impatiently.

"Hold on a minute—tell me, what's a dragon?"

"Oh! it's a snake with wings and feet with iron claws, and it has three heads, and breathes fire, and—d'you see?"

"My word!" cried Ilya, opening his eyes wide, "that'll be a handful to tackle!"

"Yes, just listen."

Sitting close together, trembling with curiosity and a strange delightful excitement, the two boys made their entry into a new wonder-world where huge evil monsters met their death beneath the mighty strokes of brave knights, where all was glorious and lovely and wonderful, and nothing resembled the dull monotony of daily life. There were no drunken, stupid, dwarfed little men, and instead of half-rotten wooden barracks, were gold-gleaming palaces and impregnable mountains of iron soaring to heaven, and while in thought they wandered through this wondrous fantasy realm of romance, at their backs the mad cobbler played his harmonica and sang his rhyming couplets:

"I'll serve the devil only While my life is whole, So when I am done for, He cannot catch my soul."

"That's the way, my brothers," he went on, "keep it up every day. God loves the happy men."

The harmonica began to whimper again as though it taxed it to overtake the hurrying voice of the cobbler, then he sang a jolly dance tune, his voice as it were running a race with the accompaniment:

"Never mind if in your youth Your lot be cold and rough, Once you make your way to Hell, You'll find it hot enough."

Every verse gained laughter and applause from the audience. The sounds of the harmonica mingled with the clatter of glasses, the heavy tread of the drinkers, and the noise of the benches dragged here and there, and the whole blended into a wild tumult, not unlike the howling of the winter storm through the forest.

But in the little cabin, shut off from this chaos of noise only by a thin partition of wood, the two boys sat bent over the book, and one read aloud softly,

"The knight caught the monster in his iron embrace, and it bellowed like thunder with wrath and pain."

VII.

After the book of the Knight and the dragon came other wonderful works of the same kind—"Guak, or Invincible Loyalty," then "The History of the Brave Prince Franzil of Venice and the Young Queen Renzivena," and all impressions of reality in Ilya's mind gave way before the knights and ladies. The comrades in turn stole twenty kopeck pieces out of the bar till, and so had no lack of books. They became acquainted with the adventurous journeys of "Jashka Sinentensky," they delighted in "Japantsha the Tartar Robber-chief," and more and more they deserted the harsh pitiless realities of life for a realm where man at all times could tear asunder the bonds of Fate and make a prize of happiness. They lived long in the thrall of these fairy tales. Ilya retained the memory of only one event of his daily life during this time. One day Perfishka was summoned to the police station. He went in fear and trembling, but came joyfully back, and with him, Pashka Gratshev, whom he held fast by the hand lest he should run away again. Pashka's eyes looked as quick and bright as ever, but he had become terribly thin and yellow, and his face had no longer its former froward expression. The cobbler brought him into the bar, and began to relate, his left eye twitching rapidly.

"Behold, my friends, here we have Mr. Pavlusha Gratshev back again as large as life—just back from the town of Pensa conveyed by favour of the police. Ah! what people there are in the world! No staying happily at home for them! When they're hardly able to stand upright they're off into the wide world to seek their fortune."

Pashka stood by, one hand in the pocket of his tattered trousers, while he strove to detach the other from the cobbler's hold, looking at him sideways, darkly.

Some one advised Perfishka to give him a good sound thrashing, but the cobbler answered seriously, letting the boy go:

"What for? let him wander a bit, perhaps he'll find his happiness."

"He'll get jolly hungry, anyway," threw in Terenti, then added in a friendly tone, giving Pashka a bit of bread.

"Here, eat it, Pashka."

Pashka took the bread quietly and went towards the tap-room door.

"Whew!" the cobbler whistled after him, "going off again? Good-bye then, my friend."

Ilya, who had witnessed this scene from the door of his room, called Pashka back.

The lad stayed a moment before answering, then went up to Ilya and asked, looking suspiciously round the little room:

"What do you want?"

"Only to say how d'ye do."

"All right, good day to you."

"Sit down a minute."

"Why?"

"Oh, we'll have a chat."

The short sulky questions, and the hoarse, harsh voice made a painful impression on Ilya. He wanted to ask Pashka where he had been all the summer and what he had seen. But Pashka, who had found a chair and begun to gnaw his bread, started questioning on his own account.

"Finished school?"

"Early next year I'm done."

"Well, I've done my learning too!"

"Why—how?" said Ilya, incredulously.

"I've been pretty quick, eh?"

"Where did you learn?"

"In prison, with the prisoners."

Ilya approached him and asked, looking respectfully into the thin face, "How long were you in? Was it bad?"

"Oh, not so bad—four months I had of it in several prisons and different towns. I got to know some fine people there, my boy, ladies too—real swells! Spoke different languages and knew everything. I always swept out their cells. Very nice people they were, if they were in gaol."

"Were they thieves?"

"No, regular villains," answered Pashka, proudly.

Ilya blinked and his respect for Pashka increased still more.

"Russians?"

"A couple of Jews too—fine fellows! I tell you, my lad, they knew their way about. Stripped everyone that they got a hand on—properly. Got caught in the end, and now going to Siberia!"

"But how did you learn things there?"

"Oh! I just said 'teach me to read,' and they did."

"Have you learnt to write too?"

"Writing I'm not so good at, but I'll read as much as you like. I've read lots of books already."

Ilya became excited now the conversation turned on books.

"I read with Jakov, too," he said, "and such books!"

Both began to name all the books they had read, in rivalry. Pashka had to admit with a sigh:

"I see, you've read the most, you lucky devil, and your books are nicer too. I've read mostly poetry. They had a lot of books there, but nearly all verses."

Jakov came in at this point, he raised his eyebrows and laughed:

"Now then sheep, what are you laughing at?" Pashka greeted him.

"Hullo! Where have you been?"

"Where you'll never be able to go."

"Just think," put in Ilya, "he's been reading books, too!"

"Really?" said Jakov, and came nearer in a more friendly way.

The three boys sat close together, in lively desultory conversation.

"I've seen such things, I couldn't even tell you!" cried Pashka, proud and excited. "Once I went two days without eating—not a bite! I've spent a night in the forest, alone."

"Was it bad?" asked Ilya.

"You go and try it, then you'll know. And once the dogs nearly killed me. That was in Kazan, where they put up a monument to a man, just because he made verses. A great, big man he was—his legs, I tell you, as thick as that, and his fist as big as your head, Jakov. I'll make you some poetry, boys—I know how, a bit."

He suddenly sat straight up, drew his legs in, and, looking steadily at one point, he said, quickly, with a serious, important air:——

"Men, well fed and richly dressed Pass through the streets all day, But if I beg a bit of bread They answer—go away!"

He stopped, looked at the other two, and hung his head down. For a minute they all stared in an embarrassed silence, then Ilya asked, hesitatingly:——

"Is that poetry?"

"Can't you hear?" replied Pashka, crossly. "It rhymes—day, away—so of course it's poetry."

"Of course," chimed in Jakov, quickly. "You're always finding fault, Ilya."

"I've made more poetry than that!" Pashka turned to Jakov and went on again:——

"The earth is wet and the clouds are grey, The autumn draws nearer, day by day, And I—have no house for the winter's cold And my clothes are tattered and worn and old."

"Ah!" said Jakov, and looked at Pashka with round eyes.

"That was regular poetry," admitted Ilya.

A fleeting blush passed over Pashka's face and he screwed up his eyes as if the smoke had got into the room.

"I shall make a long poem," he boasted. "It's not so very difficult. You go out and look about you—stream, dream, tree, free—the rhymes come up by themselves."

"And what will you do now?" asked Ilya.

Pashka let his glance wander round; there was a pause, then he said, slowly and vaguely, "oh, something or other," then added decidedly, "If I don't like it, I'll run away again."

For the time being, however, he lived with the cobbler, and every evening the children gathered there. It was quieter and more cosy in the cellar than in Terenti's room. Perfishka was seldom at home. He had sold for drink all that could be sold, and now worked by the day in various workshops, and if there was no work to be got, he sat in the bar-room. He went about half-clothed and barefoot, and his beloved old harmonica was always under his arm. It had come to be almost a part of his body, it had absorbed a portion of his cheerful disposition. The two were very much alike, out at elbows and worn, but full of jolly songs and tunes. In all the workshops of the town, Perfishka was known as a tireless singer of gay rollicking rhymes and dance tunes. Wherever he appeared he was a welcome guest, and all liked him because he could lighten the heavy weary load of existence, with his drolleries tales and anecdotes.

Whenever he earned a couple of kopecks, he gave his daughter the half. His only care now was for her. For the rest, Masha was mistress of her own fate. She had grown tall, her black hair fell below her shoulders, her big dark eyes looked out on the world seriously, and she played the hostess in the underground room most excellently. She collected shavings from the places where new building was in progress, and tried to cook the soup with them, and up to midday went about with her skirts tucked up, quite black, and wet, and busy. But once her meal was prepared, then she cleaned up the room, washed, put on a clean dress, and settled herself at the table before the window to mend her clothes. While she cobbled away with her needle at the rags, she would sing a gay song, and in her liveliness and activity, she was like a titmouse in a cage.

Matiza would often pay her a visit, and bring her rolls of bread, tea, and sugar, and once even gave her a blue dress. Masha received the visit quite like a grown-up person, a proper housewife. She would put the little samovar on the table and serve Matiza with tea, and while they enjoyed the hot stimulating drink, they would chat of the events of the day and Perfishka's conduct. Matiza used to get quite carried away with anger over the cobbler, while Masha, in her clear little voice, would not dispute, out of politeness to her guest, but still would speak of Perfishka without a trace of resentment. In everything that she said of her father, a resolute forbearance was always present.

"Quite true," she would say, in an old-fashioned way, "it is not reasonable for a man to drink so. But he loves gaiety, and only drinks to cheer himself up. While mother was alive, he did not drink much."

"Serve him right, if his liver dries up," grumbled Matiza, in her deep bass, contracting her eyebrows fiercely. "Does the soaker forget he has a child sitting at home? Disgusting brute! He'll die like a dog!"

"He knows that I'm grown up, and can look after myself," answered Masha.

"My God! my God!" Matiza would say, with a big sigh, "the things that go on in this world of God's! What'll happen to the girl? I had a little girl just like you. She stayed at home there, in the town of Chorol, and it is so far to Chorol that if I wanted to go, I couldn't find the way. That's the way with people, they live on the earth, and forget the home where they were born."

Masha liked to hear the deep voice and see the big face and the brown eyes, like those of a cow. And, even if Matiza constantly smelt of brandy, none the less Masha would sit on her lap, nestle against her big, swelling bosom, and kiss the full lips of the well-formed mouth. Matiza used to come in the morning, and in the evening the children gathered in Masha's room. They sometimes played card games of various sorts, but more often sat over a book. Masha listened always with great interest while they read aloud, and would give a little scream at any peculiarly terrifying places.

Jakov was more careful of the child than ever. He brought her from the house bread and meat, tea and sugar, and oil in beer bottles. Sometimes even he gave her any money that was left from the purchases of books. It had become an established thing for him to do all this, and he managed it all so quietly that no one noticed. Masha, for her part, took his labours as a matter of course, and made little to do over them.

"Jakov," she would say, "I've no more coals."

"All right." And presently he would either bring some coal or give her a two-kopeck bit and say, "You'll have to buy some—I couldn't steal any."

He brought Masha a slate and began to teach her in the evenings. They got on slowly, but at the end of two months Masha could read all the letters, and write them on the slate.

Ilya had become accustomed to these relations between the two, and everyone in the house seemed also to overlook them. Many a time Ilya, commissioned by his friend, would himself steal something from the kitchen or the counter and get it secretly down to the cellar. He liked the slender brown girl, who was an orphan, like himself, but he liked her specially because she knew how to face the world alone, and conducted all her affairs like a full-grown woman. He loved to see her laugh, and would always try to amuse her, and if he did not succeed, he grew cross and teased her.

"Dirty blackbird!" he would cry, scornfully.

She would blink her eyes, and reply jeeringly, "Skinny devil!"

One word would lead to another, and soon they would be quarrelling in real earnest. Masha was hot tempered and would fly at Ilya to scratch him, but he readily escaped laughing.

One day, while they were playing cards, he saw her cheat, and in his rage, called at her:

"You—Jashka's darling!" and followed it with an ugly word, whose significance he understood already. Jakov, who was present, laughed at first, then seeing his little friend's face contract with pain at the insult, and her eyes shine with tears, he became pale and dumb. Suddenly he sprang from his chair, flung himself on Ilya, struck him on the nose with his fist, grasped him by the hair and threw him to the ground. It all happened so quickly that Ilya had no time to defend himself, then he picked himself up and rushed headlong at Jakov, blind with wrath and pain. "Wait, my boy, I'll teach you," he shouted furiously. But he saw Jakov with his elbow on the table, crying bitterly, and Masha beside him saying to him with a voice choked with tears:

"Let him alone, the beast—the brute—they're a bad lot, his father's a convict, and his uncle's a hunchback—and a hump'll grow on you too, you beast," she cried, attacking Ilya quite furiously.

"You beastly dirt-grabber—rag-picker! Come here—just you come here, and I'll scratch your face for you—you dare touch me!"

Ilya did not stir. He was much distressed at the sight of Jakov crying, for he had not meant to hurt him, and he was ashamed to scuffle with a girl—though she was ready enough he could see. Without a word he left the cellar and paced the courtyard for a long time, his heart tortured with bitter feelings. At last he went to the window and looked carefully in from above. Jakov was playing cards again with his friend, Masha, the lower part of her face concealed with her cards held fanwise, seemed to be laughing, while Jakov looked at his cards and touched first one then the other. Ilya's heart was heavy. He walked up and down a while longer, then boldly and decidedly went back to the cellar.

"Let me come in again," he said, going up to the table.

His heart thumped, his face burned and his eyes were downcast. Jakov and Masha said nothing.

"I'll never insult you so again, by God, I won't any more," he went on, and looked at them.

"Well, sit down then—you!" said Masha, and Jakov added:

"Silly! You're big enough now to know what you're saying."

"No no, we're all little—just children," Masha put in, and struck the table with her fist, "and that's why we don't need any low words."

"You gave me a jolly good licking, all the same," said Ilya to Jakov reproachfully.

"You deserved it, don't complain!" said Masha, sententiously, and with a darkened face.

"All right—all right I'm not angry, it was my fault," and Ilya smiled at Petrusha's son. "We'll make it up, shall we?"

"All right, take your cards."

"You wild devil!" said Masha.

And with that peace was made. A moment later, Ilya was deep in the game, thoughtfully wrinkling his brow. He always arranged to play next to Masha; he disliked her to lose, and thought of little else all through the game. But the child played quite cleverly, and generally it was Jakov who lost.

"Oh you goggle eyes!" Masha would say, pityingly, "You've lost again."

"Devil take the cards!" answered Jakov, "it's jolly dull, nothing but playing cards. Let's read some more Kamtchadalky."

They got out a torn and dirty book and read the sorrowful history of the amorous and unfortunate Kamtchadalky.

When Pashka saw the three children amuse themselves so pleasantly, he used to say in the tone of a world explorer:

"You lead a pleasant life here, you cunning ones."

Then he would look at Jakov and Masha and smile, then add seriously:

"Go on all the same! and later on you can marry Masha, eh Jakov?"

"Silly," Masha would say, laughing, and then they all four laughed together.

Pashka was generally with them. If they had finished a book or if there was a pause in the reading, he would relate his experiences, and his tales were no less interesting than the books.

"When I found, lads, that I couldn't travel easily without a passport, I had to be very cunning. When I saw a policeman, I used to walk faster, as if some one had sent me on an errand, or I'd get up alongside the nearest grown up person, as if he was my master or my father, or some one; the policeman would look at me and let me go on, he didn't notice anything.

"It was jolly in the villages. They don't have policemen, only old men, and old women and children, peasants that work on the fields. If any one asks me who I am, I say a beggar; whom I do belong to? No one, got no relations. Where do I come from? From the town. That's all. They'd give me things to eat and drink—good things. And then you can go where you like, can run as fast as you like or crawl if you want to. And the fields and the woods are everywhere, the larks sing, you feel as if you could fly up with them. When you're full, then you don't want anything else; feel as if you could go to the end of the world. It's just as if someone was coaxing you on, like a mother with a child. But lots of times I've been jolly hungry. Oho! and my stomach wasted inside, it was so dried up. I could have eaten the dirt, my head was giddy; but then if I got a bit of bread and got my teeth in it—ah—aah—that was good—I could have eaten all day and all night. That was something like! All the same I was glad when I got into prison. At first I was frightened, but soon I was quite pleased.

"I was always so frightened of the police. I thought when they first got hold of me and began to cuff me, they'd kill me. But what d'you think it was like really? He just came softly behind and nipped me by the collar—snap!—I was looking at the watches in a jeweller's window. Oh, such a lot. Gold ones and others. All at once—snap! I began to howl, and he says quite friendly, 'who are you? Where do you come from?' So I just told him—they found it out, they know everything. 'Where do you want to go?' they ask you then. I said 'I'm wandering about'—they laughed. Then I went to gaol. They all laughed there, and then the young gentlemen took me—they were devils if you like—oho!"

Pashka never spoke of the "gentlemen" without interjections—evidently they had made a deep impression on him, though their aspect had become vague in his memory like a big, dark spot. Pashka remained a month with the cobbler, then disappeared again. Later on Perfishka found out that he had entered a printing works as an apprentice and was living in a distant quarter of the town. When Ilya heard it he was filled with envy and said to Jakov with a sigh:

"And we two have got to stay rotting here!"

VIII.

At first after Pashka's disappearance Ilya felt as though he missed something, but soon he slipped back into his unreal wonderworld. The book-reading proceeded busily and Ilya's soul fell into a pleasant half-asleep condition.

The awakening was sudden and unexpected. Ilya was just starting for school one day when his uncle said to him:

"You'll soon be done with learning now. You're fourteen years old. You'll have to look out for a place for yourself."

"Of course," added Petrusha, "that won't be difficult among all our acquaintances. There's a place ready for Jashka—another year and he goes behind the counter. And for you, Terenti, I'll open another place close by, you can run it on account, and be your own master. H'm, yes! I may well thank the Lord. He has cared for me."

Ilya heard these speeches as though they came from somewhere a great way off. They bore no relation to anything that he was busied with then, and left him completely cold. But one day his uncle waked him early in the morning and said:——

"Get up and wash yourself—but be quick."

"Why, what's the matter?" asked Ilya, sleepily.

"It's a place for you. Something has turned up, thank God! You're to go into a fishmonger's."

Ilya's heart sank with unpleasant anticipation. The wish to leave this house, where he knew everything and was used to everything, suddenly disappeared, and Terenti's room, which he had never liked, all at once seemed so clean and bright. With downcast eyes he sat on his bed and had no inclination to dress. Jakov came in, unkempt and grey in the face, his head bent towards his left shoulder. He gave a fleeting glance at his friend, and said:

"Come on! Father's waiting. You'll come here often?"

"Of course, I'll come."

"Now, go and say good-bye to Masha!"

"But I'm not going away for altogether," cried Ilya, crossly.

Masha came in herself at this point. She stood by the door, looked at Ilya, and said sorrowfully:——

"Good-bye, Ilya"

Ilya tugged at his jacket, got into it somehow, and swore. Masha and Jakov both sighed deeply.

"Come and see us soon."

"All right, all right!" answered Ilya, crossly.

"See how he begins to stick it on—mister shopman!" remarked Masha.

"Oh you silly goose!" answered Ilya, softly and reproachfully.

Two minutes later he was going along the street beside Petrusha, who was dressed in his best clothes, with a long overcoat and creaking boots.

"I'm taking you to a most worthy man, that all the town respects," said Petrusha, in an impressive tone, "to Kiril Ivanitch Strogany. He has been decorated and all sorts of things for his goodness and his benevolence; he is on the Town Council, and may be chosen Burgomaster. Serve him well and properly, and he may do something for you. You're a serious lad, and not a spoiled darling, and for him to do anyone a good turn's as easy as spitting."

Ilya listened, and tried to picture the merchant Strogany. He imagined in an odd way that he must be like Jeremy, as withered up and as good-hearted and sociable. But when he reached the fish-shop, he saw behind the desk a tall man with a big belly. There was not a single hair on his head, but from his eyes to his neck, his face was covered with a thick red beard. His eyebrows too, were red and thick, and from underneath them a pair of little greenish eyes looked angrily round about.

"Bow to him," whispered Petrusha to Ilya, indicating the red-bearded man with his eyes. Disillusioned, Ilya let his head sink on his breast.

"What's his name?" a deep bass voice boomed through the shop.

"He's called Ilya," answered Petrusha.

"Well, Ilya, open your eyes and listen to me. From now, there's no one in the world for you but your employer—no relations, no friends, d'you see? I'm your father and mother—and that's all I've got to say to you."

Ilya's eyes wandered furtively about the shop. Huge sturgeons and shad were in baskets with ice, against the walls; on shelves were piled up dried perch and carp, and everywhere gleamed small tin boxes. A penetrating reek of brine filled the air, and all was stuffy and close and damp in the shop. In great tubs on the floor swam the live fish, slowly and noiselessly—sterlet, eel-pout, perch, and tench. In one a little pike dashed angrily and quickly through the water, hustling the other fish, and splashing water on to the ground with great strokes of its tail. Ilya felt sorry for the poor thing. One of the shopmen, a little fat man, with round eyes and a hooked nose, very like an owl, told Ilya to take the dead fish out of the tubs. The lad tucked up his sleeve and plunged his arm carefully into the water.

"Take 'em by the head, stupid," said the shopman, in a low voice. Sometimes by mistake Ilya caught hold of a live fish that was not moving. It would slip through his fingers, dart through the water wildly hither and thither, and strike its head against the sides of the barrel.

"Get on! get on!" commanded the shopman, but Ilya had got a fin bone stuck in his finger, and put his hand to his mouth and began to suck the place.

"Take your finger out of your mouth," resounded the bass voice of his employer. Next a big heavy hatchet was given to the boy, and he was ordered to go to the cellar and smash up ice into even-sized pieces. The ice splinters flew in his face and slipped down his neck; it was cold and dark in the cellar, and if he did not handle the axe carefully it struck the ceiling. At the end of a few minutes, Ilya, wet from head to foot, came up out of the cellar, and said to his employer, "I've broken one of the bowls somehow."

His employer looked at him attentively, then said:

"The first time I forgive you, especially as you came and told me, but next time I'll pull your ears off."

Quite mechanically Ilya adapted himself to his new surroundings, like a little screw fitting into a big noisy machine. He got up at five o'clock every morning, cleaned the boots of his master and the family and the shopman, then went into the shop, cleaned it out, and washed down the tables and the scales. As the customers came, he fetched the goods out, and carried them to the different houses, then returned to the mid-day meal. In the afternoon there was little to do, and unless he were sent anywhere on an errand, he used to stand in the shop door and look at the busy marketing, and marvel what a number of people there were in the world, and what vast quantities of fish and meat and fruit they consumed. One day he asked the shopman, who was so like an owl:——

"Michael Ignatish!"

"Well—what is it?"

"What will people eat when they've caught all the fish there are, and killed all the cattle?"

"Stupid!" answered the shopman.

Another time he took a sheet of newspaper from the table, and settled himself in the shop door to read. But the shopman tore it out of his hand, tweaked his nose, and said crossly:

"Who said you could do that, fool!"

This shopman did not please Ilya at all. When he spoke to his employer, he said every word through his teeth, with a respectful hissing sound, but behind his back he called him a liar, a hypocrite, and a red-headed devil. Every Saturday and the eve of every saint's day, when his chief had gone to evening service, the shopman had a visit from his wife or his sister, and used to give them a big parcel of fish and caviare and preserves. He thought it a great joke to banter the poor beggars, among whom many an old man would remind Ilya very strongly of Grandfather Jeremy. If such an old man came to the shop door and begged for alms, the shopman would take a little fish by the head and hold it out, and as soon as the beggar took hold of it, the back fin would stick into his palm till the blood came. The beggar would shrink with the pain, but the shopman would laugh scornfully, and cry out:——

"Don't want it, eh? Not enough? Get out of this!"

Once an old beggar-woman took a dried perch quietly and hid it among her rags. The shopman saw. He seized the old woman by the neck, took away her stolen prize, then, bending her head back, he struck her in the face with his right hand. She made no sound of pain nor said a word, but went out silently with bent head, and Ilya saw how the dark blood ran from her nostrils.

"Had enough?" the shopman called after her, and, turning to Karp, the other shopman, he said:——

"I hate these beggars, idlers! Beg? Yes, and make a good thing of it! They know how to get along. Christ's brothers they call them. And I, what am I, then? A stranger to Christ, I suppose. I twist and turn all my life, like a worm in the sun, and get no peace and no respect."

Karp, the other shopman, was a silent, pious fellow. He talked of nothing but churches, church music, and church worship, and every Saturday was greatly distressed at the thought that he would be late for evening service. For the rest, he was deeply interested in all sorts of jugglery, and whenever a magician and wonder-worker appeared in the town, off went Karp for certain to see him. He was tall and thin and very agile. When customers thronged the shop, he would wind in and out among them like a snake, with a smile for all and a word for all, and the whole time keeping an eye on the fat face of his employer, as though to show off his quickness before him. He treated Ilya with little consideration, and the boy accordingly was not at all devoted to him. But his employer Ilya liked. From morning till night he stood behind his desk, opening the till and throwing in money. Ilya observed that he did it quite indifferently, without covetousness, and it gave him a pleasant feeling to see it. He liked, too, that his master spoke to him more often and in a more friendly way than to the shopmen. In the quiet times when there were no customers, he would often talk to Ilya as he stood in the shop-door, sunk in thought.

"Now, Ilya. Asleep, eh?"

"No."

"Oh, aren't you? What are you so solemn about, then?"

"I—I don't know."

"Find it dull here, eh?"

"Ye—es."

"Well, never mind, never mind. There was a time when I found life dull, too, from nineteen to thirty-two. I found it very tedious working for strangers, and now ever since then, I see what a bore others find it," and he nodded his head, as much as to say:

"So it is and it can't be helped."

After two or three speeches of this kind the question began to busy Ilya, why this rich and respected man should stay all day in a dirty shop and breathe the sharp, unpleasant reek of salt fish, when he owned such a big, clean house. It was quite a remarkable house; in it all was quiet and austere, and everything was ordered by fixed immutable rules. And yet in its two stories, there lived no one beyond the owner, his wife and his three daughters, except a cook, who was also housemaid, and a manservant, who acted also as coachman, so there was little life in it. All who dwelt there spoke in an undertone, and if they had to cross the big, clean courtyard, they would keep to the sides as if they feared to walk across the wide open space. When Ilya compared this quiet, solid house with Petrusha's, against his expectations he had to admit that the life in the latter was more to be preferred, poor, noisy and dirty though it were. He marvelled at this conviction of his, and could hardly believe in it; but thoughts of this kind filled his brain more and more frequently and distinctly, and the fact that his employer lived so little in his own house, strengthened Ilya still more in his preference. He would have liked to ask the merchant just why he spent the whole day in the unrest, noise and clamour of the market and not in his house, where it was still and peaceful. One day when Karp had gone on some errand, and Michael was in the cellar picking out the dead fish for the almshouse, the master fell again into conversation with Ilya, and in the course of it the boy said with a sudden impulse:

"You might give up your business, sir—you're so rich—it's so lovely in your house and so—so dull here."

Strogany rested his elbows on the desk supporting his head and looked attentively at his apprentice. His red beard twitched oddly.

"Well," he asked, as Ilya stopped, "Said all you want to?"

"Ye—ss, yes," stammered Ilya, a little frightened.

"Come here!"

Ilya went nearer to the desk. His master caught hold of his chin, turned his face up, looked him in the face with screwed-up eyes, then asked:

"Have you heard any one say that or did you think it yourself?"

"I thought of it—really and truly."

"Oh! If you thought it yourself, all right, but I'll just tell you one thing, in future have the goodness not to talk to your employer like that, you understand—your employer. Bear that in mind, and now get to your work!"

And when Karp returned, the merchant began suddenly to speak to him, for no apparent reason, constantly looking sideways at Ilya, so openly, that the boy quickly noticed it:

"A man must follow his business all his life—all—his—life! Whoever does not is an ass. How can a man live without something to do? A man who isn't absorbed in his business, is good for nothing."

"Of course, I quite agree, Kiril Ivanovitch," said the shopman, letting his glance travel round the shop as if he was seeking something more to do. Ilya looked at his employer and fell into deep thought. Life to him among these men became more and more tedious. The days dragged on one after the other like long grey threads, unrolling from some mighty unseen skein. And it seemed to him that these days would never come to an end, but that all his life long he would stand at this shop door and listen to the tumult of the market-place. But his intelligence, already awakened by early experience and by the reading of books, was not hampered by the drowsy influence of this monotonous life, and worked on without a pause, though perhaps more slowly. Every day the lad's soul received new impressions which simmered within him, and filled his head with a cloud of ideas concerning all that passed around him. He had no one to whom he could pour out his thoughts, which were therefore hidden, in his own breast. They were many, very many—they tortured him often, but they were without definite form, they melted one into the other, or contended in opposition and lay on brain and heart like a heavy load. Sometimes it was so painful to this serious silent lad to look on at the concourse of men that he would most gladly have closed his eyes or gone somewhere far, far away—farther than Pashka Gratschev had gone—never to return to this grey dulness and incomprehensible human worthlessness.

On holy days they sent him to church. He came back always with the sense that his heart had been washed clean in the sweet-smelling, warm stream that flowed through the house of God. In half a year he was only able to visit his uncle twice. There, all went on as of old. The hunchback grew thinner and Petrusha whistled louder, and his face once rosy, was now red. Jakov complained that his father treated him harshly: "He's always growling that I must begin to be reasonable, that he can't stand a book-worm: but I can't stand serving at the bar, nothing but noise and quarrels and rows, you can't hear yourself speak. I say, 'put me out as an apprentice, say in a shop where they sell eikons and things, there isn't much to do, and I like eikons.'"

Jakov's eyes blinked mournfully; the skin on his forehead looked very yellow and shone like the bald patch on his father's head.

"Do you still read books?" asked Ilya.

"Rather! It's my only comfort—as long as I can read, I feel as if I were in another place, and when I come to the end I feel as if I had pitched off a church tower."

Ilya looked at him and said:

"How old you look—and where is Mashutka?"

"She's gone to the almshouse for some things. I can't help her much now, father keeps too sharp a look out, and Perfishka is ill all the time, so she has to go to the almshouse. They give away cabbage soup there and that sort of thing. Matiza helps her a bit, but it's hard lines for her, poor Masha!"

"It's dull here—with you—too," said Ilya, thoughtfully.

"Is it dull in business?"

"Frightfully. You've got books at least, and in our whole house there's only one book, the 'Book of Newest Magic and Jugglery,' and the shopman keeps that in his box; and what d'you think, the beast won't let me have it. I hate him. Ah, my lad, it's a beastly life for both of us, isn't it?"

"Looks like it!"

They chatted a while and parted, both very sad and thoughtful.

Another fortnight passed in this same way, when suddenly there came a sharp turning in the course of Ilya's life. One morning, while business was proceeding in a lively manner, the chief suddenly began to look for something in his desk very eagerly. An angry red covered his forehead, and the veins of his neck swelled up.

"Ilya," he shouted, "come and look here on the floor, if you can't find a ten-rouble piece!"

Ilya looked at his master, then glanced quickly over the floor, and said quietly: "No, there's nothing."

"I tell you, look—look properly!" growled his employer, in his harsh bass voice.

"I have looked already."

"Ah, ah! Wait a bit, you impudent rascal!" And as soon as the customers were gone he called Ilya, seized the boy's ear in his strong fat fingers and twisted it, snarling in his harsh voice, "When you're told to look, look! When you're told to look, look!"

Ilya pressed with both hands against his master's body, released his ear from the fingers, and cried loudly and angrily, his whole frame quivering with excitement:

"Why do you bully me? Michael stole the money. Yes, he did. It's in his left waistcoat pocket."

The owl face of the shopman suddenly lengthened; he looked very disturbed, and began to tremble. Then suddenly he let out with his right arm, and struck Ilya on the ear. The boy sprang suddenly up, fell to the ground with a loud groan, and crying, crept on all fours into a corner of the shop. As one in a dream, he heard the threatening voice of his master:——

"Stay, there, give up that money!"

"It's a lie," squeaked the shopman.

"Come here!"

"I swear—I——"

"I'll throw the weight at your head!"

"Kiril Ivanitch, it's my own money, may God strike me dead if it isn't."

"Hold your tongue!"

Then silence. The chief went to his room, and from there came at once the loud rattle of the balls on the counting frame. Ilya sat on the floor, holding his head, and looking with hatred at the shopman, who stood in another corner of the shop, and on his side, cast threatening looks at the boy.

"Ah, you vagabond, shall I give you any more?" he asked in a low voice, showing his teeth.

Ilya shrugged his shoulders, and said nothing.

"Wait, my boy. I'll give you something, just in case you forget me."

The shopman strode slowly across to the boy, and looked in his face with round, malignant eyes.

Ilya got up, and with a rapid movement took a long, thin knife from the counter, and said "Come on!"

The shopman stood still, measuring with a fixed glance the strong sturdy figure, with long arms and the knife in one hand, then murmured scornfully: "Pooh, you convict's brat!"

"Just come on, come on!" repeated the boy, and advanced a step. Everything whirled before his eyes, but in his breast he felt a great strength which urged him bravely forward.

"Drop that knife!" said his master's voice.

Ilya shuddered when he saw the red beard and livid face of his master, but did not move.

"Put down that knife, I tell you," repeated the merchant quietly.

Ilya, who felt as though he were moving through a dark cloud, put the knife down on the counter, gave a loud sob, and sat down again on the floor. He felt giddy. His head and his damaged ear pained him. A heavy weight that lay on his breast hindered his breathing, pressed on his heart, and rose up slowly in his throat, choking his speech. He heard his employer's voice as though he were far away.

"Here is your salary due, Mishka."

"But let me——" the shopman tried to explain.

"Out you go, else I'll call the police."

"All right, I'll go, but keep an eye on that young cub, I advise you. He goes at people with a knife—he, he! His dear father is in Siberia, a convict—he, he!"

"Get out!"

There was stillness again in the shop. Ilya had an unpleasant feeling, as though something were crawling over his face. He wiped off his tears with his hand, looked about him, and saw his master behind his desk, examining him with a sharp searching look. Ilya got up and went towards his place at the door, staggering uncertainly.

"Stop! Hold on a minute," called out his master. "Would you really have put that knife in him?"

"Yes, I would," answered the boy, quietly, but with assurance.

"Oh, oh! What's your father in Siberia for? Murder?"

"No. Setting fire to a house."

"Good enough."

Karp, the other shopman, came back from an errand at this moment. He sat down on a stool near the door, and looked out at the street.

"Listen, Karpushka," began the master, with smile. "I've just sent Mishka packing."

"It's your right, Kiril Ivanovitch."

"Think! He robbed me."

"Impossible!" cried Karp, softly, but evidently frightened, "Is that true? The villain!"

The chief laughed behind his desk till he had to hold his sides and his red beard shook.

"Ho! ho! ho!" he laughed. "Ah, Karpushka, you conjuror, modest soul!"

Then he stopped laughing suddenly, gave a deep sigh, and said, sternly and thoughtfully, "Ah, men, men! All want to live, all want to eat, and every one better than his neighbour."

He shook his head and was silent.

Ilya, standing by the desk, felt hurt that his master paid no further attention to him.

"Well, Ilya," said the merchant finally, after a long, painful silence, "let's have a chat. Tell me, though, have you ever seen Michael steal before?"

"Yes, rather! He stole all the time. Fish and all the rest."

"And why didn't you tell me?"

"I—I——" stammered Ilya, after a short pause.

"Afraid of him, eh?"

"No, I wasn't afraid."

"So—then why didn't you say 'Master, you're being robbed'?"

"I don't know. I didn't want to."

"H'm! You only told me just now out of temper?"

"Yes," said Ilya, defiantly.

"There, see! What a young cub!"

The merchant stroked his red beard for a while, and looked earnestly at Ilya without speaking.

"And you, Ilya, have you ever stolen."

"No."

"I believe you—you have not stolen, but Karp now—this fellow Karp here, does he steal?"

"Yes, he steals," answered Ilya curtly.

Karp looked at him in astonishment, blinked his eyes and turned away as if the matter did not concern him in the least. The master's brows contracted darkly, and again he began to stroke his beard. Ilya felt clearly that something out of the common was impending and awaited the end, strung to the pitch of nervousness. The flies hovered about in the sharp, reeking air of the shop. The water in the tubs of live fishes splashed.

"Karpushka!" the chief addressed the shopman who was standing motionless in the door and looking attentively at the streets.

"What can I do, sir?" answered Karp, and hurried to his employer, looking at his face with submissive, friendly eyes.

"Do you hear what is said of you?"

"Yes, I heard."

"Well, what have you to say?"

"Nothing," said Karp, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing! What d'you mean by that?"

"It's quite simple, Kiril Ivanovitch. I am a man that respects himself and so I don't feel that my character can be hurt by a boy. You see yourself how absolutely stupid he is, and doesn't understand anything. So I can forgive his wicked slander with a light heart."

"Stop, my friend! Let's have none of your juggling, but kindly tell me, has he spoken the truth?"

"What is truth?" answered Karp slowly, shrugging his shoulders and holding his head on one side. "Every one understands the truth in his own way—if you like, you can take his words for truth, but if you don't like, it's just as you wish."

Karp ended with a sigh, bowed to his employer, and made a gesture that indicated how deeply hurt he felt.

"H'm! so you leave it to me—you think the youngster silly?"

"Uncommonly silly," said Karp with brusque conviction.

"No, my lad, that's a lie," said Strogany, and laughed outright. "How he came out with the truth right in your face! Ho! Ho! Does Karp steal? Yes, he steals. Ho! Ho! Ho!"

Ilya had gone from the desk to the door and from there had listened to this conversation, which he felt clearly had in it something insulting to him. When he heard his master laugh, a joyful sense of revenge flooded his heart, he looked triumphantly at Karp and gratefully at his employer. Strogany screwed up his eyes and laughed heartily and Karp hearing his laugh, followed with a dry anxious "He! he! he!"

At the sound of this thin bleating, Strogany ordered sharply:

"Shut up the shop."

On the way to the merchant's house, Karp said to Ilya, shaking his head:

"A fool you are, an utter fool! starting all that rigmarole! d'you suppose that's the way to curry favour? You young ass! d'you think he doesn't know that Mishka and I, both of us, stole from him—he was a young man once—he! he! As he's sent off Mishka, I've that to thank you for to tell the truth, but for telling tales of me—I'll never forgive that, I tell you straight; it's stupid and wrong, too, to say a thing like that—in my presence too. No, I can't forget that; it showed that you don't respect me!"

Ilya listened, not understanding clearly, and said nothing. He had expected Karp to approach him very differently, probably to give him a good thrashing on the way home, and consequently he had been afraid to start. But in Karp's words sounded contempt more than anger, and for his mere threats Ilya cared nothing. It was the evening of that day before the meaning of the speech was clear to Ilya, when his employer sent for him to go upstairs.

"Ah! now you see! go on!" Karp called after him in a voice presaging evil.

Ilya went upstairs and stood at the door of a big room, with a long table under a hanging lamp, and a samovar on the table. His master sat there with his wife and three daughters, all red-haired and freckled.

When Ilya came in they crowded closer together and looked at him timidly out of their blue eyes.

"That's the boy," said his employer.

"You don't say so—such a young rascal," said the wife anxiously and looked at Ilya as if she had never seen him before.

Strogany smiled, stroked his beard, drummed on the table with his fingers, and said impressively:

"I've sent for you, Ilya, to tell you I don't need you any more, so get your things together and start off."

Ilya started and opened his mouth in astonishment, but could not get out a word, then turned and went out of the room.

"Stop!" called the merchant, stretching one arm out after him, and striking the table with his palm, "Stop!"

Then he held up one finger and went on slowly and composedly: "It's not only for that that I sent for you. No. I want to give you a lesson to take away with you. I wish to explain to you why I don't need you any more. You've done all right as far as I am concerned, you're a youngster that has had some education, you're industrious and honest and strong—yes, you've all those trump cards in your hand, and yet you won't suit me any more. I can't do with you in my business. Why? you ask—h'm—yes."

Ilya understood this much, that he seemed at the same time to be praised and dismissed. The contradiction would not come clear in his mind, but roused in him a strange double sensation and brought him to the idea that his employer himself did not know what he was doing. Strogany's face seemed to the lad to confirm this impression; on it there was an expression of tension, as though he were struggling in his mind with a thought for which he could not clearly find words. The boy stepped forward and said quietly and respectfully.

"You dismiss me because I took the knife to him?"

"Heavens!" cried his employer's wife. "Heavens! how insolent!"

"That is it," said the merchant complacently, while he smiled at Ilya, and tapped him with his forefinger, "you are insolent. That is the word—insolent. But a lad that goes out to work must be humble—humble and modest; the Scriptures teach it. He must sink himself in his master. Everything—his intelligence, his honesty, must be used for his master's advantage, and you take a stand of your own, and that won't do at all, you see, and that's why you're insolent; for instance, you tell a man to his face that he's a thief. That isn't good, it is insolent; if you are so honest yourself you might tell me what the man does, but quite privately. I would easily have settled the business, because I am the master. But you say right out—he steals. No, no, that won't do. If there's only one honest out of three that matters nothing; in these cases one must reckon according to circumstances. Suppose there's one honest and nine rascals, that's no good to anyone, generally the one goes to the wall, but if there are seven honest to three rascals, then you're right to speak out, d'you see? right goes with the majority, and one honest, what's the good of him? That's how it stands with honesty, my boy. Don't force your righteousness on people, but find out first if they want it."

Strogany wiped the sweat off his brow with his hand, sighed, and continued with an expression of compassion mingled with self-satisfaction:

"And then you take to the knife."

"O Lord!" cried his wife, and the three girls crowded closer together.

"It is written in the Scriptures, 'He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword.' H'm—yes—for this reason I can't keep you any more, that's the truth. Here take this half rouble and go—go your way, you need have no grudge against me, any more than I have against you. See, I give you half a rouble, take it, and I have spoken to you as one seldom speaks to a boy, quite seriously, that you may take it to heart, and so forth. Perhaps I'm sorry for you, but you're no good to me; if the linch pin does not fit, the wise man throws it away before he starts his journey. So, go your way!"

"Good-bye," said Ilya. He had listened with attention and explained the matter to himself quite simply; he was dismissed because the merchant could not get rid of Karp and leave himself without a shopman.

This thought cheered him and made him content, and his master seemed to him a very unusual man, simple and friendly.

"Take your money!" called Strogany.

"Good-bye," repeated Ilya, and held the little silver coin tight in his hand. "Thank you very much."

"There, he never cried a bit!" Ilya heard his master's wife say reproachfully.

When Ilya, bundle on back, came out of the heavy house door, it seemed to him as though he were leaving a grey, far-off land, that he had read of in some book, where there was nothing, no people, no villages, but only stones, and among these stones lived a good old magician, who showed the way out to wayfarers lost in the desert land.

It was the evening of a clear spring day. The sun was setting and the windows flamed red. Ilya remembered that other day when first he saw the town from the river shore. The bundle, heavy with all his worldly goods, weighed on his back and he slackened his speed. People on the pavements hurried by and struck against his load; carriages rolled noisily past him; the dust danced in the slanting sun rays, and over everything prevailed a sense of noisy, gay, lively activity. All that he had experienced during the year in the town was vivid in his memory. He felt like a grown-up man, his heart beat proudly and free, and in his ears rang the words of his master:

"You are a youngster that has had some education, you're not stupid, you're strong and not lazy; these are the trump cards in your hand."

"Well then, we'll try again," said Ilya to himself while he slackened his pace still more. A stirring feeling of joy possessed him, and involuntarily he smiled at the thought that to-morrow he would not have to go to the fish shop.

IX.

When Ilya returned to the house of Petrusha Filimonov, he discovered with pleasure that he had grown considerably during the time he had spent in the shop. Every one made a point of greeting him with flattering curiosity, and Perfishka held out a hand to him. "My respects to my lord the shopman. Well brother, have you served your time? I've heard of your bold strokes. Ha! ha! Ah, brother, men will let you use your tongue to lick their boots, but not to tell them the truth."

When Mashka saw Ilya, she cried joyfully, "Ah, how tall you've grown!"

And Jakov was delighted to see his comrade again.

"This is good," he said, "now we can live together again like we used to. Do you know, I've got a book called 'The Albigenses,' such a story, I tell you! There's a man in it, Simon Montfort, he's a real monster."

And Jakov, in his vague, hurried way, started to tell his friend the contents of the book. Ilya looked at him and thought with a peaceful content, that his big-headed comrade had stayed just as he was before. Jakov saw nothing at all unusual in Ilya's conduct towards the merchant Strogany. He listened to the whole story, then said simply, "That was all right." This unmoved reception of his experience by Jakov was not to Ilya's taste. Even Petrusha, when he had heard Ilya's account of what took place in the shop, had applauded the boy's behaviour and not stinted his approval.

"You gave it him very well, my lad, very cleverly. Of course, Kiril Ivanovitch couldn't send off Karp for you. Karp knows the business, and it wouldn't be easy to replace him. But after such a scene, you couldn't stay on with him. You stuck to the truth, and played with the cards on the table, you must have come off the better."

However, a day or two after, Terenti said to his nephew softly:

"Listen. Don't be too open with Petrusha. Be careful. He doesn't like you. He abuses you behind your back. He says, 'See how the boy loves the truth, but why is it? out of sheer stupidity.' H'm, yes. That's what he says."

Ilya listened and laughed.

"And yesterday, he praised me; said I'd managed cleverly. Men are all like that, they'll praise you to your face, but behind your back they'll say things."

Petrusha's duplicity did not in the least lessen Ilya's heightened self-confidence. He felt exactly like a hero, and was convinced that he had behaved very well with regard to the merchant—better than any other had ever behaved under similar circumstances.

Two months later, when a new place had been sought for Ilya, zealously but in vain, this conversation took place between the uncle and nephew:

"Yes, it's bad," said the hunchback, gloomily, "not a place to be found for you. Everywhere it's the same thing—he's too big! What shall we do, my boy? What I do you think?"

Ilya answered decidedly and with conviction: "I'm fifteen years old. I can read and write. I'm not stupid, and if I'm insolent they'll only send me away from any other place I get. Who can do with an insolent man?"

"But then, what shall we do?" asked Terenti, anxiously, sitting on his bed and supporting himself on it with his hands.

"I'll tell you. Let me have a big box and buy me some goods—soap and scent, needles and books, all sorts of small things, and I'll go round about with them and do business for myself."

"What?—What do you mean, Ilusha? I don't quite understand. In the bar room here, in the noise, it always goes tchk!—tchk! tchk! So that my head's got weak, and then there's something never lets me alone, always the same thing, I can't think of anything else!"

A strange tortured expression showed in the hunchback's eyes, as though he wanted to reckon up something and could not get it right.

"Try it, uncle; let me go once any way."

Ilya entreated, excited by his idea which promised him freedom.

"Well, God help us! we might try."

"Ah! splendid! you'll see how it'll go," cried Ilya delighted.

"Oh dear!" Terenti sighed deeply, and went on sorrowfully: "If only you were quite grown up! Ah! then I could go away, but now you're just an anchor to hold me, it's only for your sake I stay in this beastly hole, and go down, down. I might go to some holy men and say: 'Servants of God! doers of good! interceders! I have sinned, accursed that I am, my heart is heavy, save me, pray for pardon for me to my Father!'"

And the hunchback began to weep quietly.

Ilya knew well what sin oppressed his uncle and remembered it clearly. His heart was uplifted; he pitied, but could find no words of consolation and was silent, till he saw the tears flow from the sunken, introspective eyes of his uncle, then he said: "There—there, don't cry any more! See! Wait till I get on a bit in business, then you can get away from here." After a moment's silence he resumed consolingly, "There—you'll see, you'll be forgiven."

"Do you think so really?" asked Terenti softly, and the lad repeated in a tone of conviction:

"Of course you'll be forgiven, worse things than that have been pardoned, I'm sure of it."

So it came about that Ilya took to the pedlar's trade. From morning to night he traversed the streets, with his box at his breast, while his black eyebrows contracted, and he looked out on the world full of self-confidence with his nose in the air. With his cap drawn down on his forehead, he held up his head and cried with his boyish voice beginning to break:

"Soap! blacking! pomade! hairpins! needles and thread, pins! books—beautiful books!"

Life flowed round him in a gay and tumultuous stream, and he swam with it, free and light-hearted, and felt himself to be a man even as all the others were. He drove a trade round the bazaars, went to the inns, and would order his tea importantly, drink it slowly, and eat a piece of white bread like a man who knows his worth. Life seemed to him simple, easy and pleasant.

His dreams took on clear and simple forms. He imagined how in two or three years he would sit in a clean little shop of his own, somewhere in a good street, not too noisy, and in this shop he would deal in all sorts of clean and pretty wares, that were clean to handle and did not spoil the clothes. He himself would look clean and healthy and handsome. Every one in the street would respect him and the girls would look at him with friendly glances. When his shop was shut he would sit in a clean bright little room near it and drink his tea, and read books. Cleanliness in everything seemed to him the essential determining factor of a well-ordered life. So he dreamed when trade was good and no one hurt him by rough behaviour. But if he had sold nothing and was sitting tired in the bar or somewhere in the street, then all the harshness and hustling of the police, the insulting remarks of customers, the abuse and mockery of his fellows the other pedlars, weighed on his soul and he felt within him a painful sense of unrest. His eyes opened wide and looked deeper into the web of life, and his memory, so rich in impressions, pushed into the wheels of his thought one impression after another. He saw clearly how all men strove for the same goal as he, how all longed for the same quiet, full and clean life on which his desire was set. Yet no one scrupled to thrust aside whomsoever was in his way; all were so greedy, so pitiless, and harmed one another, with no necessity, with no advantage to themselves, out of sheer pleasure in another's pain. They often laughed when they could hurt most deeply and seldom had pity on those whom they made to suffer.

Such images made his work seem hateful. The dream of a clean little shop vanished away, and he felt in his heart an enervating weariness. It seemed to him that he would never save enough money out of his trading to open the shop, and that right on into his old age he must wander about the hot, dusty streets, his box on his breast, and the straps galling his shoulders. But every success in his undertaking awakened new courage and gave new life to his dreams.

One day in a busy street Ilya quite unexpectedly met Pashka Gratschev. The smith's son tramped along the pavement with the assured stride of one free of all care, his hands in the pockets of his torn trousers, wearing a blue blouse, also torn and dirty, which was much too big for him. The heels of his big, well-worn boots clumped on the pavement at every step. His cap with a broken peak rested jauntily over his left ear, leaving half of his close-cropped head exposed to the rays of the summer sun. Face and neck alike were covered with thick greasy black dirt. He recognised Ilya from a distance, and nodded to him in a friendly way, without hastening his easy pace.

"Good luck," said Ilya. "Fancy meeting you!"

Pashka took his hand, pressed it and laughed. His teeth and eyes shone bright and dear for a moment under his black mask.

"How goes it?" asked Ilya.

"It goes as it can. When there's anything to bite at, I bite, and when there's nothing I whine and lie curled up. Ha! ha! I'm jolly glad to meet you anyhow!"

"Why do you never come to see us?" asked Ilya, smiling. It was pleasant to him to see an old comrade glad to meet him in spite of his dirty face. He looked at Pashka's worn boots and then at his own new, shining pair that had cost nine roubles, and smiled complacently.

"How should I know where you live?" said Pashka.

"With Filimonov, just the same."

"Oh! Jashka said you were in some fish shop or other."

Ilya related with pride his experiences in the house of Strogany, and how now he was keeping himself.

"That's the way," cried Gratschev approvingly, "they turned me out of the printing works just the same way, for insolence. Then I was with a painter, mixed the colours and that sort of thing, till one day I sat down on a fresh-painted signboard, and then of course there was a row, they all went for me, master and mistress, and pupils, till their arms were tired out and then sent me to the devil. Now I'm with a well-sinker, six roubles a month. I've just had dinner and I'm going back to work."

"You don't seem in a hurry with your job."

"Oh! devil take it! Whoever knows what work is doesn't get excited over it. I must come and look you up some time."

"Yes! do come."

"Do you still read books?"

"Rather. And you?"

"Yes, when I can."

"And do you still make poetry?"

"Yes, I make poetry."

Pashka laughed again happily.

"You'll come then, won't you? And don't forget the poems."

"I'll come right enough. I'll bring some brandy, too."

"Have you taken to drinking then?"

"Oh, just a little—but now, good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Ilya.

He passed on his way, thinking deeply of Pashka. To him it seemed strange that this ragged fellow had showed no envy of his own shining boots and clean clothes, indeed had hardly appeared to notice them. Again, Pashka had rejoiced openly when Ilya spoke of his independent untrammelled life. His thoughts filled Ilya with an incomprehensible unrest, and he said to himself: "Doesn't this Gratschev, then, want the same things as all the rest. What is there to wish for in life but a clean, peaceful, independent existence?"

Melancholy and unrest of this kind possessed Ilya, especially after he had visited the church. He seldom missed a service, midday or evening. He used not to pray, but would simply stand in some corner and look, without any definite thought, at the worshipping crowd and listen to the singing of the choir. Men stood there, silent and motionless, and there was a certain sense of unanimity in the stillness, as though each were endeavouring to think as all the others thought. Waves of song, blended with waves of incense, swept through the house of God, and often Ilya felt as though he were borne upwards on the stream of sound to float in the warm caressing air above. There was something that comforted the soul in the earnest, solemn voice that filled the church, so different from the hubbub of life and not to be reconciled with it. At first this feeling remained apart from everyday impressions, did not mingle with them and left him undisturbed; but later it came to him to feel as though there was something living in his heart, ceaselessly observing him; shy and anxious it dwelt concealed in a corner of his heart as he went about his accustomed business, but grew in his soul whenever he entered the church and aroused in him a strange, disquieting thought, opposing his dream of a clean, sheltered life. At such times the tales of the hermit Antipa rose in his mind, and the talk of the pious old rag-picker concerning a loving God. "The Lord sees all things, knows all things, beside Him there is nothing."

Ilya would return home full of unrest and perplexity, feeling his dreams of the future fade, and recognising that hidden in him lay something that cared not at all for his little business. But life renewed its claims on him, and this something dived quickly down again to the depths of his soul.

Jakov, with whom Ilya discussed almost everything, knew nothing of this division in his friend's soul. Indeed, Ilya came to the consciousness of it against his will, and never voluntarily let his thoughts run on this incomprehensible sensation.

His evenings were spent pleasantly. As soon as he returned, he went straight to the cellar and said to Masha quite as if he were the master in his own home:

"Now Masha, is the samovar ready?" and the samovar would be already prepared and standing on the table steaming and singing. Ilya always brought some delicacy with him, almond or honey cakes, or gingerbread or syrup, and for this Masha supplied him with tea. Besides, the girl had begun to earn money for herself; Matiza had taught her to make paper flowers, and Masha loved to shape red roses out of the thin rustling sheets. She could earn ten kopecks a day. Her father had contracted typhus, and lay for two months in hospital, returning thin and meagre with beautiful dark curls. His tousled, untrimmed beard was shaved off, and in spite of his yellow sunken cheeks, he looked five years younger. As before he worked in various shops, frequently did not even sleep at home and left all care and management of his home to Masha. She patched his clothes and called her father "Perfishka" like all the rest. The shoemaker made great fun of her demeanour to him, but felt an evident respect for his little curly-headed girl, who could laugh as heartily and cheerfully as himself.