and could not; I was perfectly benumbed.... And he fairly rushed
out of the church! I ran after him ... but he fled straight to the
tavern where we had put up, flung his wallet over his shoulder, and away
he flew!

"Whither?" I shouted to him. "Yakoff, what aileth thee? Stop, wait!"

But Yakoff never uttered a word in reply to me, but ran like a hare, and
it was utterly impossible to overtake him! He disappeared from sight. I
immediately turned back, hired a cart, and trembled all over, and all I
could say was: "O Lord!" and, "O Lord!" And I understood nothing: some
calamity had descended upon us! I set out for home, for I thought, "He
has certainly fled thither."--And so he had. Six versts out of the town
I espied him; he was striding along the highway. I overtook him, jumped
out of the cart, and rushed to him.

"Yasha! Yasha!"--He halted, turned his face toward me, but kept his eyes
fixed on the ground and compressed his lips. And say what I would to
him, he stood there just like a statue, and one could just see that he
was breathing. And at last he trudged on again along the highway.--What
was there to do? I followed him....

Akh, what a journey that was, my dear sir! Great as had been our joy on
the way to Voronezh, just so great was the horror of the return! I would
try to speak to him, and he would begin to gnash his teeth at me over
his shoulder, precisely like a tiger or a hyena! Why I did not go mad I
do not understand to this day! And at last, one night, in a peasant's
chicken-house, he was sitting on the platform over the oven and dangling
his feet and gazing about on all sides, when I fell on my knees before
him and began to weep, and besought him with bitter entreaty:

"Do not slay thy old father outright," I said; "do not let him fall
into despair--tell me what has happened to thee?"

He glanced at me as though he did not see who was before him, and
suddenly began to speak, but in such a voice that it rings in my ears
even now.

"Listen, daddy," said he. "Dost thou wish to know the whole truth? When
I had taken the communion, thou wilt remember, and still held the
particle[26] in my mouth, suddenly _he_ (and that was in the church, in
the broad daylight!) stood in front of me, just as though he had sprung
out of the ground, and whispered to me ... (but he had never spoken to
me before)--whispered: 'Spit it out, and grind it to powder!' I did so;
I spat it out, and ground it under foot. And now it m