d work up to a system of life needed by everybody. He
would come out directly and openly for the truth. Am I right, mother?"

"You are. You're right, my dear. Otherwise we can't conquer life."

"Have you a husband?"

"He died. I have a son."

"And where is he? Does he live with you?"

"He's in prison." The mother suddenly felt a calm pride in these
words, usually painful to her. "This is the second time--all because
he came to understand God's truth and sowed it openly without sparing
himself. He's a young man, handsome, intelligent; he planned a
newspaper, and gave Mikhail Ivanovich a start on his way, although he's
only half of Mikhail's age. Now they're going to try my son for all
this, and sentence him; and he'll escape from Siberia and continue with
his work."

Her pride waxed as she spoke. It created the image of a hero, and
demanded expression in words. The mother needed an offset--something
fine and bright--to balance the gloomy incident she had witnessed that
day, with its senseless horror and shameless cruelty. Instinctively
yielding to this demand of a healthy soul, she reached out for
everything she had seen that was pure and shining and heaped it into
one dazzling, cleansing fire.

"Many such people have already been born, more and more are being born,
and they will all stand up for the freedom of the people, for the
truth, to the very end of their lives."

She forgot precaution, and although she did not mention names, she told
everything known to her of the secret work for the emancipation of the
people from the chains of greed. In depicting the personalities she
put all her force into her words, all the abundance of love awakened in
her so late by her rousing experiences. And she herself became warmly
enamored of the images rising up in her memory, illumined and
beautified by her feeling.

"The common cause advances throughout the world in all the cities.
There's no measuring the power of the good people. It keeps growing
and growing, and it will grow until the hour of our victory, until the
resurrection of truth."

Her voice flowed on evenly, the words came to her readily, and she
quickly strung them, like bright, varicolored beads, on strong threads
of her desire to cleanse her heart of the blood and filth of that day.
She saw that the three people were as if rooted to the spot where her
speech found them, and that they looked at her without stirring. She
heard the intermitte