t hear, and went on softly:

"I am unhappy about my money. Do you remember on Low Sunday before his
wedding Anisim's bringing me some new roubles and half-roubles? One
parcel I put away at the time, but the others I mixed with my own money.
When my uncle Dmitri Filatitch--the kingdom of heaven be his--was alive,
he used constantly to go journeys to Moscow and to the Crimea to buy
goods. He had a wife, and this same wife, when he was away buying goods,
used to take up with other men. She had half a dozen children. And when
uncle was in his cups he would laugh and say: 'I never can make out,'
he used to say, 'which are my children and which are other people's.' An
easy-going disposition, to be sure; and so I now can't distinguish which
are genuine roubles and which are false ones. And it seems to me that
they are all false."

"Nonsense, God bless you."

"I take a ticket at the station, I give the man three roubles, and I
keep fancying they are false. And I am frightened. I must be ill."

"There's no denying it, we are all in God's hands.... Oh dear, dear..."
said Varvara, and she shook her head. "You ought to think about this,
Grigory Petrovitch: you never know, anything may happen, you are not a
young man. See they don't wrong your grandchild when you are dead and
gone. Oy, I am afraid they will be unfair to Nikifor! He has as good
as no father, his mother's young and foolish... you ought to secure
something for him, poor little boy, at least the land, Butyokino,
Grigory Petrovitch, really! Think it over!" Varvara went on persuading
him. "The pretty boy, one is sorry for him! You go to-morrow and make
out a deed; why put it off?"

"I'd forgotten about my grandson," said Tsybukin. "I must go and have
a look at him. So you say the boy is all right? Well, let him grow up,
please God."

He opened the door and, crooking his finger, beckoned to Lipa. She went
up to him with the baby in her arms.

"If there is anything you want, Lipinka, you ask for it," he said.
"And eat anything you like, we don't grudge it, so long as it does you
good...." He made the sign of the cross over the baby. "And take care of
my grandchild. My son is gone, but my grandson is left."

Tears rolled down his cheeks; he gave a sob and went away. Soon
afterwards he went to bed and slept soundly after seven sleepless
nights.

VII

Old Tsybukin went to the town for a short time. Someone told Aksinya
that he had gone to the notary to make his wi