tache with both hands inquired:

"And how do I speak, pray?"

"As if nobody had ever done you any wrong."

He rose, approached her, and shaking his head, said:

"Is there an unwronged soul anywhere in the wide world? But I have
been wronged so much that I have ceased to feel wronged. What's to be
done if people cannot help acting as they do? The wrongs I undergo
hinder me greatly in my work. It is impossible to avoid them. But to
stop and pay attention to them is useless waste of time. Such a life!
Formerly I would occasionally get angry--but I thought to myself: all
around me I see people broken in heart. It seemed as if each one were
afraid that his neighbor would strike him, and so he tried to get ahead
and strike the other first. Such a life it is, mother dear."

His speech flowed on serenely. He resolutely distracted her mind from
alarm at the expected police search. His luminous, protuberant eyes
smiled sadly. Though ungainly, he seemed made of stuff that bends but
never breaks.

The mother sighed and uttered the warm wish:

"May God grant you happiness, Andriusha!"

The Little Russian stalked to the samovar with long strides, sat in
front of it again on his heels, and mumbled:

"If he gives me happiness, I will not decline it; ask for it I won't,
to seek it I have no time."

And he began to whistle.

Pavel came in from the yard and said confidently:

"They won't find them!" He started to wash himself. Then carefully
rubbing his hands dry, he added: "If you show them, mother, that you
are frightened, they will think there must be something in this house
because you tremble. And we have done nothing as yet, nothing! You
know that we don't want anything bad; on our side is truth, and we will
work for it all our lives. This is our entire guilt. Why, then, need
we fear?"

"I will pull myself together, Pasha!" she assured him. And the next
moment, unable to repress her anxiety, she exclaimed: "I wish they'd
come soon, and it would all be over!"

But they did not come that night, and in the morning, in anticipation
of the fun that would probably be poked at her for her alarm, the
mother began to joke at herself.

CHAPTER VI

The searchers appeared at the very time they were not expected, nearly
a month after this anxious night. Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was at
Pavel's house talking with him and Andrey about their newspaper. It was
late, about midnight. The mother was already