epartment in the Exchequer.

"And now look at you," he said, folding up the newspaper, "a beggar,
in rags, good for nothing! Even working-class people and peasants
obtain education in order to become men, while you, a Poloznev,
with ancestors of rank and distinction, aspire to the gutter! But
I have not come here to talk to you; I have washed my hands of you
--" he added in a stifled voice, getting up. "I have come to find
out where your sister is, you worthless fellow. She left home after
dinner, and here it is nearly eight and she is not back. She has
taken to going out frequently without telling me; she is less dutiful
--and I see in it your evil and degrading influence. Where is she?"

In his hand he had the umbrella I knew so well, and I was already
flustered and drew myself up like a schoolboy, expecting my father
to begin hitting me with it, but he noticed my glance at the umbrella
and most likely that restrained him.

"Live as you please!" he said. "I shall not give you my blessing!"

"Holy Saints!" my nurse muttered behind the door. "You poor, unlucky
child! Ah, my heart bodes ill!"

I worked on the railway-line. It rained without stopping all August;
it was damp and cold; they had not carried the corn in the fields,
and on big farms where the wheat had been cut by machines it lay
not in sheaves but in heaps, and I remember how those luckless heaps
of wheat turned blacker every day and the grain was sprouting in
them. It was hard to work; the pouring rain spoiled everything we
managed to do. We were not allowed to live or to sleep in the railway
buildings, and we took refuge in the damp and filthy mud huts in
which the navvies had lived during the summer, and I could not sleep
at night for the cold and the woodlice crawling on my face and
hands. And when we worked near the bridges the navvies used to come
in the evenings in a gang, simply in order to beat the painters--
it was a form of sport to them. They used to beat us, to steal our
brushes. And to annoy us and rouse us to fight they used to spoil
our work; they would, for instance, smear over the signal boxes
with green paint. To complete our troubles, Radish took to paying
us very irregularly. All the painting work on the line was given
out to a contractor; he gave it out to another; and this subcontractor
gave it to Radish after subtracting twenty per cent. for himself.
The job was not a profitable one in itself, and the rain made it
worse; time was