e day in Lent the clerk told
him to clear the snow from the roof. Alyosha climbed on to the roof and
swept away all the snow; and, while he was still raking out some frozen
lumps from the gutter, his foot slipped and he fell over. Unfortunately
he did not fall on the snow, but on a piece of iron over the door.
Ustinia came running up, together with the merchant's daughter.

"Have you hurt yourself, Alyosha?"

"Ah! no, it's nothing."

But he could not raise himself when he tried to, and began to smile.

He was taken into the lodge. The doctor arrived, examined him, and asked
where he felt the pain.

"I feel it all over," he said. "But it doesn't matter. I'm only afraid
master will be annoyed. Father ought to be told."

Alyosha lay in bed for two days, and on the third day they sent for the
priest.

"Are you really going to die?" Ustinia asked.

"Of course I am. You can't go on living for ever. You must go when the
time comes." Alyosha spoke rapidly as usual. "Thank you, Ustinia. You've
been very good to me. What a lucky thing they didn't let us marry! Where
should we have been now? It's much better as it is."

When the priest came, he prayed with his bands and with his heart. "As
it is good here when you obey and do no harm to others, so it will be
there," was the thought within it.

He spoke very little; he only said he was thirsty, and he seemed full of
wonder at something.

He lay in wonderment, then stretched himself, and died.

MY DREAM

"As a daughter she no longer exists for me. Can't you understand? She
simply doesn't exist. Still, I cannot possibly leave her to the charity
of strangers. I will arrange things so that she can live as she pleases,
but I do not wish to hear of her. Who would ever have thought . . . the
horror of it, the horror of it."

He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and raised his eyes. These
words were spoken by Prince Michael Ivanovich to his brother Peter, who
was governor of a province in Central Russia. Prince Peter was a man of
fifty, Michael's junior by ten years.

On discovering that his daughter, who had left his house a year before,
had settled here with her child, the elder brother had come from St.
Petersburg to the provincial town, where the above conversation took
place.

Prince Michael Ivanovich was a tall, handsome, white-haired, fresh
coloured man, proud and attractive in appearance and bearing. His family
consisted of a vulgar, irritable wife,