isible amid
the obscurity, fell to singing hymns--the basses intoning monotonously,
"Sing, thou Holy Angel!" and voices of higher pitch responding, coldly
and formally.

"Sing ye!
Sing glory unto Christ, thou Angel of Holiness!
Sing ye!
Our singing will we add unto Thine,
Thou Angel of Holiness!"

And though the chorus failed altogether to dull the splashing of the
rivulet and the babbling of the by-cut over a bed of stones, it seemed
out of place in this particular spot; it aroused resentment against men
who could not think of a lay more atune with the particular living,
breathing objects around us.

Gradually darkness enveloped the defile until only over the mouth of
the pass, over the spot where, gleaming a brilliant blue, the rivulet
escaped into a cleft that was overhung with a mist of a deeper shade,
was there not yet suspended the curtain of the Southern night.

Presently, the gloom caused one of the rocks in our vicinity to assume
the guise of a monk who, kneeling in prayer, had his head adorned with
a pointed skull-cap, and his face buried in his hands. Similarly, the
stems of the trees stirred in the firelight until they developed the
semblance of a file of friars entering, for early Mass, the porch of
their chapel-of-ease.

To my mind there then recurred a certain occasion when, on just such a
dark and sultry night as this, I had been seated tale-telling under the
boundary-wall of a row of monastic cells in the Don country. Suddenly I
had heard a window above my head open, and someone exclaim in a kindly,
youthful voice:

"The Mother of God be blessed for all this goodly world of ours!"

And though the window had closed again before I had had time to discern
the speaker, I had known that there was resident in the monastery a
friar who had large eyes, and a limp, and just such a face as had
Vasili here; wherefore, in all probability it had been he who had
breathed the benediction upon mankind at large, for the reason that
moments there are when all humanity seems to be one's own body, and in
oneself there seems to beat the heart of all humanity....

Vasili consumed his food deliberately as, breaking off morsels from his
slice, and neatly parting his moustache, he placed the morsels in his
mouth with a curious stirring of two globules which underlay the skin
near the ears.

The ex-soldier, however, merely nibbled at his food--he ate but little,
and that lazily. Then he extracted a pipe f