me, aim at the head. Don't just wound me; kill me at once."

"I hear what you're saying," Yefim replied sharply.

"Listen, boys," said Rybin, letting his glance stray about the little
assembly with a deliberate, grave gesture of his raised hand. "Here's
a woman," pointing to the mother, "whose son is surely done for now."

"Why are you saying this?" the mother asked in a low, sorrowful voice.

"It's necessary," he answered sullenly. "It's necessary that your hair
shouldn't turn gray in vain, that your heart shouldn't ache for
nothing. Behold, boys! She's lost her son, but what of it? Has it
killed her? Nilovna, did you bring books?"

The mother looked at him, and after a pause said:

"I did."

"That's it," said Rybin, striking the table with the palm of his hand.
"I knew it at once when I saw you. Why need you have come here, if not
for that?" He again measured the young men with his eyes, and
continued, solemnly knitting his eyebrows: "Do you see? They thrust
the son out of the ranks, and the mother drops into his place."

He suddenly struck the table with both hands, and straightening himself
said with an air that seemed to augur ill:

"Those----"--here he flung out a terrible oath--"those people don't
know what their blind hands are sowing. They WILL know when our power
is complete and we begin to mow down their cursed grass. They'll know
it then!"

The mother was frightened. She looked at him, and saw that Mikhail's
face had changed greatly. He had grown thinner; his beard was
roughened, and his cheek bones seemed to have sharpened. The bluish
whites of his eyes were threaded with thin red fibers, as if he had
gone without sleep for a long time. His nose, less fleshy than
formerly, had acquired a rapacious crook. His open, tar-saturated
collar, attached to a shirt that had once been red, exposed his dry
collar bones and the thick black hair on his breast. About his whole
figure there was something more tragic than before. Red sparks seemed
to fly from his inflamed eyes and light the lean, dark face with the
fire of unconquerable, melancholy rage. Sofya paled and was silent,
her gaze riveted on the peasant. Ignaty shook his head and screwed up
his eyes, and Yakob, standing at the wall again, angrily tore splinters
from the boards with his blackened fingers. Yefim, behind the mother,
slowly paced up and down along the length of the table.

"The other day," continued Rybin, "a governmen