her head, turned toward home with a sigh
of relief.

"And Pasha is in prison with Andriusha!" she thought sadly.

Nikolay met her with an anxious exclamation:

"You know that Yegor is in a very bad way, very bad! He was taken to
the hospital. Liudmila was here. She asks you to come to her there."

"At the hospital?"

Adjusting his eyeglasses with a nervous gesture, Nikolay helped her on
with her jacket and pressed her hand in a dry, hot grasp. His voice
was low and tremulous. "Yes. Take this package with you. Have you
disposed of Vyesovshchikov all right?"

"Yes, all right."

"I'll come to Yegor, too!"

The mother's head was in a whirl with fatigue, and Nikolay's emotion
aroused in her a sad premonition of the drama's end.

"So he's dying--he's dying!" The dark thought knocked at her brain
heavily and dully.

But when she entered the bright, tidy little room of the hospital and
saw Yegor sitting on the pallet propped against the wide bosom of the
pillow, and heard him laugh with zest, she was at once relieved. She
paused at the door, smiling, and listened to Yegor talk with the
physician in a hoarse but lively voice.

"A cure is a reform."

"Don't talk nonsense!" the physician cried officiously in a thin voice.

"And I'm a revolutionist! I detest reforms!"

The physician, thoughtfully pulling his beard, felt the dropsical
swelling on Yegor's face. The mother knew him well. He was Ivan
Danilovich, one of the close comrades of Nikolay. She walked up to
Yegor, who thrust forth his tongue by way of welcome to her. The
physician turned around.

"Ah, Nilovna! How are you? Sit down. What have you in your hand?"

"It must be books."

"He mustn't read."

"The doctor wants to make an idiot of me," Yegor complained.

"Keep quiet!" the physician commanded, and began to write in a little
book.

The short, heavy breaths, accompanied by rattling in his throat, fairly
tore themselves from Yegor's breast, and his face became covered with
thin perspiration. Slowly raising his swollen hand, he wiped his
forehead with the palm. The strange immobility of his swollen cheeks
denaturalized his broad, good face, all the features of which
disappeared under the dead, bluish mask. Only his eyes, deeply sunk
beneath the swellings, looked out clear and smiling benevolently.

"Oh, Science, I'm tired! May I lie down?"

"No, you mayn't."

"But I'm going to lie down after you go."

"Nilovna, please d