e
people, for all the world, for all the workingmen, they went! Then
don't go away from them, don't renounce, don't forsake them, don't
leave your children on a lonely path--they went just for the purpose of
showing you all the path to truth, to take all on that path! Pity
yourselves! Love them! Understand the children's hearts. Believe your
sons' hearts; they have brought forth the truth; it burns in them; they
perish for it. Believe them!"

Her voice broke down, she staggered, her strength gone. Somebody
seized her under the arms.

"She is speaking God's words!" a man shouted hoarsely and excitedly.
"God's words, good people! Listen to her!"

Another man said in pity of her:

"Look how she's hurting herself!"

"She's not hurting herself, but hitting us, fools, understand that!"
was the reproachful reply.

A high-pitched, quavering voice rose up over the crowd:

"Oh, people of the true faith! My Mitya, pure soul, what has he done?
He went after his dear comrades. She speaks truth--why did we forsake
our children? What harm have they done us?"

The mother trembled at these words and replied with tears.

"Go home, Nilovna! Go, mother! You're all worn out," said Sizov
loudly.

He was pale, his disheveled beard shook. Suddenly knitting his brows
he threw a stern glance about him on all, drew himself up to his full
height, and said distinctly:

"My son Matvey was crushed in the factory. You know it! But were he
alive, I myself would have sent him into the lines of those--along with
them. I myself would have told him: 'Go you, too, Matvey! That's the
right cause, that's the honest cause!'"

He stopped abruptly, and a sullen silence fell on all, in the powerful
grip of something huge and new, but something that no longer frightened
them. Sizov lifted his hand, shook it, and continued:

"It's an old man who is speaking to you. You know me! I've been
working here thirty-nine years, and I've been alive fifty-three years.
To-day they've arrested my nephew, a pure and intelligent boy. He,
too, was in the front, side by side with Vlasov; right at the banner."
Sizov made a motion with his hand, shrank together, and said as he took
the mother's hand: "This woman spoke the truth. Our children want to
live honorably, according to reason, and we have abandoned them; we
walked away, yes! Go, Nilovna!"

"My dear ones!" she said, looking at them all with tearful eyes. "The
life is for our children