g rose, laid its aged, slobbering muzzle upon my knee, and gazed
into my face with its dim eyes as though it were saying, "May I too
have a bite?"

Next, like an eventide breeze among withered herbage, there floated
across the forecourt the hoarse voice of the crook-backed old woman.

"Let us pray," she said. "Oh God, take away from us all sorrow, and
receive therefore requitement in twofold measure!"

As she recited the prayer with a mien as dark as fate, the supplicant
rolled her long neck from side to side, and nodded her ophidian-shaped
head in accordance with a sort of regular, lethargic rhythm. Next I
heard sink to earth, at my feet, some senile words uttered in a sort of
singsong.

"Some folk need work just as much as they wish, and others need do no
work at all. Yet OUR folk have to work beyond their strength, and to
work without any recompense for the toil which they undergo."

Upon this the smaller of the old crones whispered:

"But the Mother of God will recompense them. She recompenses everyone."

Then a dead silence fell--a weighty silence, a silence seemingly
fraught with matters of import, and inspiring in one an assurance that
presently there would be brought forth impressive reflections--there
would reach the ear words of mark.

"I may tell you," at length the crook-backed old woman remarked as she
attempted to straighten herself, "that though my husband was not
without enemies, he also had a particular friend named Andrei, and that
when failing strength was beginning to make life difficult for us in
our old home on the Don, and folk took to reviling and girding at my
husband, Andrei came to us one day, and said: 'Yakov, let not your
hands fail you, for the earth is large, and in all parts has been given
to men for their use. If folk be cruel, they are so through stupidity
and prejudice, and must not be judged for being so. Live your own life.
Let theirs be theirs, and yours yours, so that, dwelling in peace,
while yielding to none, you shall in time overcome them all.'"

"That is what Vasil too used to say. He used to say: 'Let theirs be
theirs, and ours ours.'"

"Aye, never a good word dies, but, wheresoever it be uttered, flies
thence through the world like a swallow."

Ufim corroborated this with a nod.

"True indeed!" he remarked. "Though also it has been said that a good
word is Christ's, and a bad word the priest's."

One of the old women shook her head vigorously at this, and croa