ueer fellow. . . ."

Moisey Moisevitch came in. He looked anxiously at Solomon and at
his visitors, and again the skin on his face quivered nervously.
Yegorushka shook his head and looked about him; he caught a passing
glimpse of Solomon's face at the very moment when it was turned
three-quarters towards him and when the shadow of his long nose
divided his left cheek in half; the contemptuous smile mingled with
that shadow; the gleaming sarcastic eyes, the haughty expression,
and the whole plucked-looking little figure, dancing and doubling
itself before Yegorushka's eyes, made him now not like a buffoon,
but like something one sometimes dreams of, like an evil spirit.

"What a ferocious fellow you've got here, Moisey Moisevitch! God
bless him!" said Father Christopher with a smile. "You ought to
find him a place or a wife or something. . . . There's no knowing
what to make of him. . . ."

Kuzmitchov frowned angrily. Moisey Moisevitch looked uneasily and
inquiringly at his brother and the visitors again.

"Solomon, go away!" he said shortly. "Go away!" and he added something
in Yiddish. Solomon gave an abrupt laugh and went out.

"What was it?" Moisey Moisevitch asked Father Christopher anxiously.

"He forgets himself," answered Kuzmitchov. "He's rude and thinks
too much of himself."

"I knew it!" Moisey Moisevitch cried in horror, clasping his hands.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" he muttered in a low voice. "Be so kind as to
excuse it, and don't be angry. He is such a queer fellow, such a
queer fellow! Oh dear, oh dear! He is my own brother, but I have
never had anything but trouble from him. You know he's. . ."

Moisey Moisevitch crooked his finger by his forehead and went on:

"He is not in his right mind; . . . he's hopeless. And I don't know
what I am to do with him! He cares for nobody, he respects nobody,
and is afraid of nobody. . . . You know he laughs at everybody, he
says silly things, speaks familiarly to anyone. You wouldn't believe
it, Varlamov came here one day and Solomon said such things to him
that he gave us both a taste of his whip. . . . But why whip me?
Was it my fault? God has robbed him of his wits, so it is God's
will, and how am I to blame?"

Ten minutes passed and Moisey Moisevitch was still muttering in an
undertone and sighing:

"He does not sleep at night, and is always thinking and thinking
and thinking, and what he is thinking about God only knows. If you
go to him at night he is angr