ma donna, horses,
silver knives, golden dishes, expensive toys for their children. YOU
work, work, work, work more and more, and I'LL hoard money by your
labor and give my mistress a golden wash basin."

The mother listened, looked, and once again, before her in the
darkness, stretched the bright streak of the road that Pavel was going,
and all those with whom he walked.

When they had concluded their supper, they sat around the fire, which
consumed the wood quickly. Behind them hung the darkness, embracing
forest and sky. The sick man with wide-open eyes looked into the fire,
coughed incessantly, and shivered all over. The remnants of his life
seemed to be tearing themselves from his bosom impatiently, hastening
to forsake the dry body, drained by sickness.

"Maybe you'd better go into the shanty, Savely?" Yakob asked, bending
over him.

"Why?" he answered with an effort. "I'll sit here. I haven't much
time left to stay with people, very little time." He paused, let his
eyes rove about the entire group, then with a pale smile, continued:
"I feel good when I'm with you. I look at you, and think, 'Maybe you
will avenge the wrongs of all who were robbed, of all the people
destroyed because of greed.'"

No one replied, and he soon fell into a doze, his head limply hanging
over his chest. Rybin looked at him, and said in a dull voice:

"He comes to us, sits here, and always speaks of the same thing, of
this mockery of man. This is his entire soul; he feels nothing else."

"What more do you want?" said the mother thoughtfully. "If people are
killed by the thousands day after day working so that their masters may
throw money away for sport, what else do you want?"

"It's endlessly wearying to listen to him," said Ignaty in a low voice.
"When you hear this sort of thing once, you never forget it, and he
keeps harping on it all the time."

"But everything is crowded into this one thing. It's his entire life,
remember," remarked Rybin sullenly.

The sick man turned, opened his eyes, and lay down on the ground. Yakob
rose noiselessly, walked into the cabin, brought out two short
overcoats, and wrapped them about his cousin. Then he sat down beside
Sofya.

The merry, ruddy face of the fire smiled irritatingly as it illumined
the dark figures about it; and the voices blended mournfully with the
soft rustle and crackle of the flames.

Sofya began to tell about the universal struggle of the people for the