man. You may ask anybody, they will
all tell you so."

"Why has he been sent here?"

The governor smiled. "He had committed six murders, and yet he is a holy
man. I go bail for him."

Mitia Smokovnikov took Stepan, now a bald-headed, lean, tanned man, with
him on his journey. On their way Stepan took care of Smokovnikov, like
his own child, and told him his story; told him why he had been sent
here, and what now filled his life.

And, strange to say, Mitia Smokovnikov, who up to that time used to
spend his time drinking, eating, and gambling, began for the first time
to meditate on life. These thoughts never left him now, and produced
a complete change in his habits. After a time he was offered a very
advantageous position. He refused it, and made up his mind to buy an
estate with the money he had, to marry, and to devote himself to the
peasantry, helping them as much as he could.

XIX

HE carried out his intentions. But before retiring to his estate he
called on his father, with whom he had been on bad terms, and who had
settled apart with his new family. Mitia Smokovnikov wanted to make it
up. The old man wondered at first, and laughed at the change he noticed
in his son; but after a while he ceased to find fault with him, and
thought of the many times when it was he who was the guilty one.

AFTER THE DANCE

"--AND you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good
and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the
man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . ."

Thus spoke our excellent friend, Ivan Vasilievich, after a conversation
between us on the impossibility of improving individual character
without a change of the conditions under which men live. Nobody had
actually said that one could not of oneself understand good and evil;
but it was a habit of Ivan Vasilievich to answer in this way the
thoughts aroused in his own mind by conversation, and to illustrate
those thoughts by relating incidents in his own life. He often quite
forgot the reason for his story in telling it; but he always told it
with great sincerity and feeling.

He did so now.

"Take my own case. My whole life was moulded, not by environment, but by
something quite different."

"By what, then?" we asked.

"Oh, that is a long story. I should have to tell you about a great many
things to make you understand."

"Well, tell us then."

Ivan Vasilievich thought a little, and sho