child.

"You have lived your life, Vasi," at length the deacon muttered, "and
though once I had a place to which to resort, now I shall have none.
Yes, my last friend is dead. Oh Lord--where is Thy justice?"

For myself, I went and took a seat by the window, and, thrusting my
head into the open air, lit a pipe, and continued to listen with a
shiver to the deacon's wailings.

"Folk used to gird at my wife," he went on, "and now they are gnawing
at me as pigs might gnaw at a cabbage. That is so, Vasil. Yes that is
so."

Again the bottle made its appearance. Again the deacon took a draught.
Again he wiped his beard. Then he bent over the dead man once more, and
kissed the corpse's forehead.

"Good-bye, friend of mine!" he said. Then to myself he added with
unlooked-for clarity and vigour:

"My friend here was but a plain man--a man as inconspicuous among his
fellows as a rook among a flock of rooks. Yet no rook was he. Rather,
he was a snow-white dove, though none but I realised the fact. And now
he has been withdrawn from the 'grievous bondage of Pharaoh.' Only I am
left. Verily, after my passing, shall my soul torment and vomit spittle
upon his adversaries!"

"Have you known much sorrow?"

The deacon did not reply at once. When he did so he said dully:

"All of us have known much sorrow. In some cases we have known more
than was rightfully our due. I certainly, have known much. But go to
sleep, for only in sleep do we recover what is ours."

And he added as he tripped over his own feet, and lurched heavily
against me:

"I have a longing to sing something. Yet I feel that I had best not,
for song at such an hour awakens folk, and starts them bawling...
But beyond all things would I gladly sing."

With which he buzzed into my ear:

"To whom shall I sing of my grief?
To whom resort for relief?
To the One in whose ha-a-and--"

At this point the sharp bristles of his beard so tickled my neck as to
cause me to edge further away.

"You do not like me?" he queried. "Then go to sleep, and to the devil
too!"

"It was your beard that was tickling me."

"Indeed? Ought I to have shaved for your benefit before I came?"

He reflected awhile--then subsided on to the floor with a sniff and an
angry exclamation of:

"Read, you, whilst I sleep. And see to it that you do not make off with
the book, for it belongs to the church, and is very valuable. Yes. I
know you hard-ups! Why do you go roaming about as y