ou do--what is it
you hope to gain by your tramping?... However, tramp as much as you
like. Yes, be off, and tell people that a deacon has come by
misfortune, and is in need of some good person to take pity upon his
plight.... Diomid Kubasov my name is--that of a man lost beyond
recall."

With which he fell asleep. Opening the book at random, I read the words:

"A land unapportioned that shall produce a nourisher of humanity, a
being that shall put forth the bounty of his hand to feed every
creature."

"A nourisher of humanity." Before my eyes that "nourisher" lay
outspread, a nourisher overlaid with dry and fragrant herbage. And as I
gazed, in the haze of a vision, upon that nourisher's dark and
enigmatical face, I saw also the thousands of men who have seamed this
earth with furrows, to the end that dead things should become things of
life. And in particular, there uprose before me a picture strange
indeed. In that picture I saw marching over the steppe, where the
expanse lay bare and void--yes, marching in circles that increasingly
embraced a widening area--a gigantic, thousand-handed being in whose
train the dead steppe gathered unto itself vitality, and became swathed
in juicy, waving verdure, and studded with towns and villages. And
ever, as the being receded further and further into the distance, could
I see him sowing with tireless hands that which had in it life, and was
part of himself, and human as, with thoughts intent upon the benefiting
of humanity, he summoned all men to put forth the mysterious force that
is in them, and thus to conquer death, and eternally and invincibly to
convert, dead things into things of life, while traversing in company
the road of death towards that which has no knowledge of death, and
ensuring that, in swallowing up mankind, the jaws of death should not
close upon death's victims.

And this caused my heart to beat with emotions the pulsing wings of
which at once gladdened me, and cooled my fervour... And how greatly,
at that moment, did I feel the need of someone able to respond to my
questions without passion, yet with truth, and in the language of
simplicity! For beside me there lay but a man dead and a man drunken,
while without the threshold there was stationed one who had far
outlived her span of years. No matter, however. If not today, then
tomorrow, should I find a fellow-creature with whom my soul might
commune.

Mentally I left the hut, and passed on to the stepp