ction has your brain put together?" the mother asked, again
seized with anxious misgiving.

"I?" Rybin looked at her, was silent for a while, then repeated: "Keep
away from the masters! That's what!" He grew morosely silent again,
and seemed to shrink within himself.

"I'll go away, mother," he said after a pause. "I wanted to join the
fellows, to work along with them. I'm fit for the work. I can read
and write. I'm persevering and not a fool. And the main thing is, I
know what to say to people. But now I will go. I can't believe, and
therefore I must go. I know, mother, that the people's souls are foul
and besmirched. All live on envy, all want to gorge themselves; and
since there's little to eat, each seeks to eat the other up."

He let his head droop, and remained absorbed in thought for a while.
Finally he said:

"I'll go all by myself through village and hamlet and stir the people
up. It's necessary that the people should take the matter in their own
hands and get to work themselves. Let them but understand--they'll
find a way themselves. And so, I'm going to try to make them
understand. There is no hope for them except in themselves; there's no
understanding for them except in their own understanding! And that's
the truth!"

"They will seize you!" said the mother in a low voice.

"They will seize me, and let me out again. And then I'll go ahead
again!"

"The peasants themselves will bind you, and you will be thrown into
jail."

"Well, I'll stay in jail for a time, then be released, and I'll go on
again. As for the peasants, they'll bind me once, twice, and then they
will understand that they ought not to bind me, but listen to me. I'll
tell them: 'I don't ask you to believe me; I want you just to listen
to me!' And if they listen, they will believe."

Both the mother and Rybin spoke slowly, as if testing every word before
uttering it.

"There's little joy for me in this, mother," said Rybin. "I have lived
here of late, and gobbled up a deal of stuff. Yes; I understand some,
too! And now I feel as if I were burying a child."

"You'll perish, Mikhail Ivanych!" said the mother, shaking her head
sadly.

His dark, deep eyes looked at her with a questioning, expectant look.
His powerful body bent forward, propped by his hands resting on the
seat of the chair, and his swarthy face seemed pale in the black frame
of his beard.

"Did you hear what Christ said about the seed? 'Tho