he would not slacken his mad
pace, either at the turns of the road or on the long slopes of the
mountain roads. How it happened at such times that he crushed no one,
how he himself was never dashed to death in one of these mad rides, was
inexplicable.

He would have been driven from this place, as he had been driven from
other places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and
thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day
he received a letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was
illiterate, and as the others did not understand Esthonian, the letter
remained unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might bring
him tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure with a
certain savage, grim indifference. At one time Yanson tried to make
love to the cook, but he was not successful, and was rudely rejected
and ridiculed. He was short in stature, his face was freckled, and his
small, sleepy eyes were somewhat of an indefinite color. Yanson took his
failure indifferently, and never again bothered the cook.

But while Yanson spoke but little, he was listening to something all the
time. He heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their
heaps of frozen manure resembling rows of small, snow-covered graves,
the sounds of the blue, tender distance, of the buzzing telegraph wires,
and the conversation of other people. What the fields and telegraph
wires spoke to him he alone knew, and the conversation of the people
were disquieting, full of rumors about murders and robberies and arson.
And one night he heard in the neighboring village the little church bell
ringing faintly and helplessly, and the crackling of the flames of a
fire. Some vagabonds had plundered a rich farm, had killed the master
and his wife, and had set fire to the house.

And on their farm, too, they lived in fear; the dogs were loose, not
only at night, but also during the day, and the master slept with a gun
by his side. He wished to give such a gun to Yanson, only it was an old
one with one barrel. But Yanson turned the gun about in his hand, shook
his head and declined it. His master did not understand the reason and
scolded him, but the reason was that Yanson had more faith in the power
of his Finnish knife than in the rusty gun.

"It would kill me," he said, looking at his master sleepily with his
glassy eyes, and the master waved his hand in despair.

"You fool! Think of havin