the
soot-covered ground, and crowded up in close clusters on the edge of
the marsh. They looked sorrowfully at one another with their little
dull windows. Above them rose the church, also dark red like the
factory. The belfry, it seemed to her, was lower than the factory
chimneys.

The mother sighed, and adjusted the collar of her dress, which choked
her. She felt sad, but it was a dry sadness like the dust of the hot
day.

"Gee!" mumbled the driver, shaking the reins over the horse. He was a
bow-legged man of uncertain height, with sparse, faded hair on his face
and head, and faded eyes. Swinging from side to side he walked
alongside the wagon. It was evidently a matter of indifference to him
whether he went to the right or the left.

"Gee!" he called in a colorless voice, with a comical forward stride of
his crooked legs clothed in heavy boots, to which clods of mud were
clinging. The mother looked around. The country was as bleak and
dreary as her soul.

"You'll never escape want, no matter where you go, auntie," the driver
said dully. "There's no road leading away from poverty; all roads lead
to it, and none out of it."

Shaking its head dejectedly the horse sank its feet heavily into the
deep sun-dried sand, which crackled softly under its tread. The
rickety wagon creaked for lack of greasing.

CHAPTER II

Nikolay Ivanovich lived on a quiet, deserted street, in a little green
wing annexed to a black two-storied structure swollen with age. In
front of the wing was a thickly grown little garden, and branches of
lilac bushes, acacias, and silvery young poplars looked benignly and
freshly into the windows of the three rooms occupied by Nikolay. It
was quiet and tidy in his place. The shadows trembled mutely on the
floor, shelves closely set with books stretched across the walls, and
portraits of stern, serious persons hung over them.

"Do you think you'll find it convenient here?" asked Nikolay, leading
the mother into a little room with one window giving on the garden and
another on the grass-grown yard. In this room, too, the walls were
lined with bookcases and bookshelves.

"I'd rather be in the kitchen," she said. "The little kitchen is
bright and clean."

It seemed to her that he grew rather frightened. And when she yielded
to his awkward and embarrassed persuasions to take the room, he
immediately cheered up.

There was a peculiar atmosphere pervading all the three rooms.