prison!"

"Well, what of it? Thank God that I am good at least for that," she
said with a sigh. "Thank God! Who needs me? Nobody!"

"H'm!" said Yegor, fixing his look upon her. "A good person ought to
take care of himself."

"I couldn't learn that from you, even if I were good," the mother
replied, laughing.

Yegor was silent, and paced up and down the room; then he walked up to
her and said: "This is hard, countrywoman! I feel it, it's very hard
for you!"

"It's hard for everybody," she answered, with a wave of her hand.
"Maybe only for those who understand, it's easier. But I understand a
little, too. I understand what it is the good people want."

"If you do understand, granny, then it means that everybody needs you,
everybody!" said Yegor earnestly and solemnly.

She looked at him and laughed without saying anything.

CHAPTER XI

At noon, calmly and in a businesslike way she put the books around her
bosom, and so skillfully and snugly that Yegor announced, smacking his
lips with satisfaction:

"Sehr gut! as the German says when he has drunk a keg of beer.
Literature has not changed you, granny. You still remain the good,
tall, portly, elderly woman. May all the numberless gods grant you
their blessings on your enterprise!"

Within half an hour she stood at the factory gate, bent with the weight
of her burden, calm and assured. Two guards, irritated by the oaths
and raillery of the workingmen, examined all who entered the gate,
handling them roughly and swearing at them. A policeman and a
thin-legged man with a red face and alert eyes stood at one side. The
mother, shifting the rod resting on her shoulders, with a pail
suspended from either end of it, watched the man from the corner of her
eye. She divined that he was a spy.

A tall, curly-headed fellow with his hat thrown back over his neck,
cried to the guardsmen who searched him:

"Search the head and not the pockets, you devils!"

"There is nothing but lice on your head," retorted one of the guardsmen.

"Catching lice is an occupation more suited to you than hunting human
game!" rejoined the workman. The spy scanned him with a rapid glance.

"Will you let me in?" asked the mother. "See, I'm bent double with my
heavy load. My back is almost breaking."

"Go in! Go in!" cried the guard sullenly. "She comes with arguments,
too."

The mother walked to her place, set her pails on the ground, and wiping
the perspirati