it's
as nothing to them! They come, sit about, wait, and talk. What do you
think of that? If intelligent people are that way, if they can so
easily get accustomed to a thing like that, then what's to be said
about the common people?"

"That's natural," said the Little Russian with his usual smile. "The
law after all is not so harsh toward them as toward us. And they need
the law more than we do. So that when the law hits them on the head,
although they cry out they do not cry very loud. Your own stick does
not fall upon you so heavily. For them the laws are to some extent a
protection, but for us they are only chains to keep us bound so we
can't kick."

Three days afterwards in the evening, when the mother sat at the table
knitting stockings and the Little Russian was reading to her from a
book about the revolt of the Roman slaves, a loud knock was heard at
the door. The Little Russian went to open it and admitted
Vyesovshchikov with a bundle under his arm, his hat pushed back on his
head, and mud up to his knees.

"I was passing by, and seeing a light in your house, I dropped in to
ask you how you are. I've come straight from the prison."

He spoke in a strange voice. He seized Vlasov's hand and wrung it
violently as he added: "Pavel sends you his regards." Irresolutely
seating himself in a chair he scanned the room with his gloomy,
suspicious look.

The mother was not fond of him. There was something in his angular,
close-cropped head and in his small eyes that always scared her; but
now she was glad to see him, and with a broad smile lighting her face
she said in a tender, animated voice:

"How thin you've become! Say, Andriusha, let's dose him with tea."

"I'm putting up the samovar already!" the Little Russian called from
the kitchen.

"How is Pavel? Have they let anybody else out besides yourself?"

Nikolay bent his head and answered:

"I'm the only one they've let go." He raised his eyes to the mother's
face and said slowly, speaking through his teeth with ponderous
emphasis: "I told them: 'Enough! Let me go! Else I'll kill some one
here, and myself, too!' So they let me go!"

"Hm, hm--ye-es," said the mother, recoiling from him and involuntarily
blinking when her gaze met his sharp, narrow eyes.

"And how is Fedya Mazin?" shouted the Little Russian from the kitchen.
"Writing poetry, is he?"

"Yes! I don't understand it," said Nikolay, shaking his head. "They've
put him in a