interrupted with:

"If you would also——"

He burst in with this, but of course did not finish. The shoemaker laid down the pen, lifted his head high, so as to look through his spectacles at Maciej—who without doubt was already regretting his ill-timed remark—and said drily:

"Maciej, you are hindering me."

Maciej grew very red, and, naturally, did not utter another word. The shoemaker finished writing his name without further interruption, and took out the money. In order to avoid mistakes, he at once enclosed it with the letter in an addressed envelope.

However much Stanisław had wished during our consultation to "pull the silly fellow's ears," the letter to his son was indulgent rather than stern. It was easy to guess what that yet unseen son, the one hope of the old burgher family, was to Światełki. He had worked perseveringly and honestly for so many years, and had overcome all kinds of difficulties; lonely and neglected, he had passed victoriously through the temptations to enrich himself easily with which Siberia beguiles the unsuspecting novice. Doubtless he owed all this in a certain degree to the honest principles he had brought from his home and country, as well as to his character, but, without any doubt, equally to that son in whose very birth he saw the Hand of God. It was clear that the poor fellow dreamt of standing before his beloved child as an ascetic dreams of appearing at the Judgment-Seat. The thought that he would be able to tell him—openly and fearlessly—"I have nothing to bring you, my son, but a name unstained by a past full of the gravest temptations," was the lodestar of his life. Taking this into consideration, therefore, I did not scold the "silly fool," but explained to him in an affectionate way what the money was the father was sending to the family—money he had earned by working extremely hard, and frequently by pinching himself. I told the lad what he ought to be and might become, being strong and healthy, and that on this account his wish for money to spend on trifles gave his father pain. I wrote large and distinctly, adapting myself to the young joiner's powers of comprehension, and at the end fervently blessed him in his new walk in life.

The reading of this letter was carried on with constant interruptions, as I stopped to ascertain if I had interpreted the father's feelings and wishes rightly. From the beginning I was sure that this was the case, and became all the more certain of it as I read on. Each time I looked at him inquiringly, Stanisław answered me hastily: "Yes, yes, yes, that's just as I wanted it!" But the farther I read the shorter and quicker became the "Yes, yes." In the middle of the letter, it is true, he opened his lips once more, but I only saw that they were moving, for they did not utter a sound. I looked up again: his chin was resting on the table, and the tears were flowing down his pale cheeks. He did not make the restless movements peculiar to him when his feelings overflowed. He did not scrape his throat or blow his nose. He merely rested his chin on the table, and, sitting near me by the candle, with its light falling upon him, he quietly cried before us. He did not quiver or sob, but the tears, which had certainly not flowed from those hollow eyes for a long time, streamed from them now. When he was calm he looked at me with his large, intelligent eyes, and thanked me without raising his head. "May the Lord repay you—may the Lord repay you!" But Maciej, having already expressed his satisfaction by ejaculations and indistinct mumbling, now took courage at a longer pause to make quite a speech.

"H'm—that's fine! I've listened to lots of letters, because in the gold-mines different people wrote letters for me and others. And even here, though Z—— no doubt writes very well, he writes so learnedly, like a printed book, that you don't understand a word when you listen to it. For he puts in so many words folks don't use, you can see in a moment that he comes from a Jewish or a big family, and that he has never had much to do with the people. Now, your letter goes straight to one's heart, for it's human. Oh, poor fellow! He'll cry like an old woman at a sermon when he reads it. If you would also—but I daren't ask"—and his voice sounded really very shy—"if you would write a short letter like that to my people too, oh how my old woman would cry,—she would cry!"

While I read the letter to the priest, Maciej kept quiet, listening and possibly also beginning to consider what I was to write to his wife, if I answered to the hopes he had placed in me. But when I came to the passage in which I asked the priest about the Mass for the shoemaker's dead parents, there was a violent crash in the entrance to the kitchen, and Maciej stood before us in all his impressiveness. His appearance was so unexpected, and made with so much noise, that we looked at him in astonishment. Maciej was strangely altered, and even seemed to me to be trembling all over. He came out in silence, and standing just in front of us, with his feet wide apart as usual, he began to search for his pocket; but whether it was difficult to find in the folds of his baggy trousers, or whether for some other reason, he was a long time about it. Having found it, he drew out a small purse, and, after a long process of untying, for which he also used his teeth, he took out a crumpled three-rouble note. He stood a while holding this. At last he laid it on the table with a shaking hand, and began in an imploring, broken voice:

"If that's so—when he says the Mass, let him pray for us unhappy folks too: write that, sir. Let him pray to Almighty God and to the Holy Virgin—if it's only to bring our bones back there—and perhaps—perhaps They'll have mercy."

"Perhaps They'll have mercy," the shoemaker repeated like an echo, as he stood beside Maciej.

They stood before me—these two old men grown grey in adversity—as small children stand before a stern father, feeling their helplessness; the lame shoemaker with the hollow eyes, leaning on his stick, and that huge peasant with his hands hanging down and head bowed humbly, imploring this in a quiet whisper.

We should certainly have sat there a long while in painful musing if it had not been for the shoemaker. Stanisław was the first to rouse himself from the lethargy into which we had fallen.

"What the devil are we doing! Maciej, bestir yourself! The sausages are burning in there, and the brandy is getting stale! Eh, Maciej, look sharp!"

Maciej crept to the kitchen, and returned to us—not, to say the truth, very quickly—preceded by the smell of well-fried sausages. We shook off our lethargy so slowly, however, that even the brisk shoemaker had to make an effort to put a good face on it. His first toast was, "The success of the letters." To this Maciej responded with "Amen," and a sigh which might have come from a pair of blacksmith's bellows. The vodka did its work, however. Our recent emotion strengthened its effect, and after two glasses even an observant person would never have guessed what we had thought and felt here a few moments earlier, but for the letters lying in Stanisław's trunk. The last vestiges of sadness were charmed away by the little song which Stanisław began to sing:

But in his present cheerful frame of mind Maciej protested energetically against even this slight echo of sadness.

"Eh! just you shut