red of familiarity. She marveled that here was a lady
walking on foot and carrying a dangerous burden on her back.

"Who's going to reward you for your labors?"

Sofya answered the mother's thought with pride:

"We are already rewarded for everything. We have found a life that
satisfies us; we live broadly and fully, with all the power of our
souls. What else can we desire?"

Filling their lungs with the aromatic air, they paced along, not
swiftly, but at a good, round gait. The mother felt she was on a
pilgrimage. She recollected her childhood, the fine joy with which she
used to leave the village on holidays to go to a distant monastery,
where there was a wonder-working icon.

Sometimes Sofya would hum some new unfamiliar songs about the sky and
about love, or suddenly she would begin to recite poems about the
fields and forests and the Volga. The mother listened, a smile on her
swinging her head to the measure of the tune or involuntarily yielding
to the music. Her breast was pervaded by a soft, melancholy warmth,
like the atmosphere in a little old garden on a summer night.

On the third day they arrived at the village, and the mother inquired
of a peasant at work in the field where the tar works were. Soon they
were descending a steep woody path, on which the exposed roots of the
trees formed steps through a small, round glade, which was choked up
with coal and chips of wood caked with tar.

Outside a shack built of poles and branches, at a table formed simply
of three unplaned boards laid on a trestle stuck firmly into the
ground, sat Rybin, all blackened, his shirt open at his breast, Yefim,
and two other young men. They were just dining. Rybin was the first
to notice the women. Shading his eyes with his hand, he waited in
silence.

"How do you do, brother Mikhail?" shouted the mother from afar.

He arose and leisurely walked to meet them. When he recognized the
mother, he stopped and smiled and stroked his beard with his black hand.

"We are on a pilgrimage," said the mother, approaching him. "And so I
thought I would stop in and see my brother. This is my friend Anna."

Proud of her resourcefulness she looked askance at Sofya's serious,
stern face.

"How are you?" said Rybin, smiling grimly. He shook her hand, bowed to
Sofya, and continued: "Don't lie. This isn't the city. No need of
lies. These are all our own people, good people."

Yefim, sitting at the table, looked sharply a