up about your children! I've five of them, and I don't care as much for them all together as you do for the one."

The shoemaker evidently acknowledged the justice of this bold remark, for he passed it over in silence, and only proposed to Maciej with a gesture to put on the samovar. Maciej did his work in the kitchen noisily and cheerily. He had completely forgotten about his favourite place, "the little bench a bit stronger," and he returned to us without delay. His voice, always absolutely unsuited to the acoustic properties of the room, now sounded as perhaps it once did in those years on the fields of Mazowsze. When he spoke, it was simply a shout, for he did not modify the intonation by any expression whatever. He talked about his work, gesticulated, and waved his arms; when obliged to stand up, he moved suddenly, and the same when he sat down; he became indignant, and retracted his words; he squeezed his fingers together and spread them out; but he did all this slowly and accurately, just in the way he spoke. He said not a single word nor related a single fact without supporting and illustrating it by expressive mimicry, by a movement or a pose, which he always tried to make as near the original as possible. So when I returned to his protests against the shoemaker's sadness, and asked him: "Have you five sons, Maciej?" he answered: "Five, like the five fingers on my hand"; and, holding up his fist, he carefully spread out his fingers one by one. He laughed long and heartily at this, in the way that only children laugh, his whole body shaking.

But it was not only his laugh that was childlike; Maciej's big broad face, portraying his inward calm, reminded me of the face of a little child whose thoughts have as yet not influenced its features. In proportion to his height and breadth Maciej's head seemed to me smaller than it really was. His wide neck diminished it still more. But when he sat down, resting his hands on his knees in his usual manner, somehow his head disappeared entirely, and then from behind he was very like a pointed hayrick, while from the side he reminded me of those clumsy but impressive figures which people of past ages cut out in rocks and stone.

The longer I looked at him, the stronger became my wish to know this huge fellow rather better, and to ascertain something more about him. I therefore decided to profit by the occasion, which possibly might not soon occur again, and to spend the whole evening with the shoemaker.

Maciej chattered tremendously; he talked bidden and unbidden, and was even more loquacious than I could have hoped. Although he talked disconnectedly, with continual long digressions from the subject, I listened to him with growing interest. His anecdotes were chiefly about his life in the gold-mines. However familiar that life was to me from a number of different stories, I listened to him patiently, for I was interested in the very ticklish question of how he could have saved together several hundred roubles in surroundings where riches can always be accumulated, but rarely in a legitimate manner.

"I worked—slaved—in the gold-mines," Maciej continued on his return from the kitchen. "At first they put me to work underground, but the inspector saw me, and called out, 'Who's that huge fellow?' as if he'd never seen a big man before, the low scoundrel! He was told: 'That's Maciej, one of the Poles.' 'He's a good-looking Pole. Bring him here.' They sent for me, and I came and took off my cap"—Maciej touched his head. "But I didn't bow. Oh no! why should I? 'What a blockhead! Where do you come from?' he asked. 'Ha-ha! and where am I likely to come from if not from Poland!' Afterwards he asked again: 'Can you bake bread?' 'Is he making a fool of me, or what does he mean?' I thought to myself, but I didn't let on, and said: 'That's a woman's work, not a man's'—so I explained to him; devil knows if he understood or not! But he ordered them to take me on as baker's assistant.

"There just was drunkenness and thieving and carrying on in the bakery! Good God! But I didn't interfere; I just did what they said, and they didn't tell me to superintend or look after things. When my mates saw that I obeyed them, and worked enough for two, and didn't meddle with anything, they began to carry on worse than ever. It was like a tavern for the drinking that went on. The inspector came one, two, three times: everyone in the bakery was drunk; I was the only one at work and kneading the loaves of bread. He looked and went away. He came again the next day, and there was quite a battle going on in the house; they were having a drunken fight. He ordered them to be put into prison, and he asked me again: 'Now you know how to make bread; you've learnt it, haven't you?' So I understood he wasn't joking, and laughed: 'Oh yes, I've learnt it,' I said.

"He put me to be head baker. They dealt out all the flour used in the bakery for the whole week—and there was a lot used, for we baked for more than two hundred people. So I did my work, and weighed the flour to make it last out. Scarcely was the week over, when the inspector came again: 'Well, Maciej,' he said, 'have you had enough flour?' I just said nothing, but took him to the bakery and showed him what was left—nearly three sacks. When he saw that he opened his eyes ever so wide. 'Good! good!' he said; and he called the storekeeper and told him to make a note of how much was left, and to save half of it and give me half as reward.

"Now, in these gold-mines it just happens one way or the other: sometimes such a lot of people come you don't know where to put them, and sometimes, when they start running away, there aren't enough left even to go underground. And that's how it was there: a lot of work, and too few people to do it. First they took one man away from me, and afterwards a second, and after a week still more, so that I was left with one, and then quite alone for a few days. I was standing at the kneading trough and oven from sunrise to sunrise. When the inspector saw that I was without help, and the sweat was running off my forehead, he called out: 'Vodka! Let Maciej have as much as he wants! Drink as much as you like,' he said. I didn't stint myself; but a single glass makes one bad enough, so half a bottle was saved every day. This was my own, and in this way I got nearly a rouble a day.[2]

"But whether by slaving like this, or what not, I don't know how it was: anyway I got ill. My feet and arms seemed paralyzed all at once; dark spots came on my body, and my teeth got all shaky, like keys in an organ. 'Take him off to the hospital,' they said. The doctor said it was scurvy. Whether or no, it was a fact I got worse and worse. At last one of the miners lying in the hospital, an old Brodiaga[3], said to me: 'Don't you pay any attention to them or to the doctor, for they'll cure you for the next world. Listen to good advice. Send someone to the taiga for toadstools, fill a bottle with them, and after it has been standing a certain time and has got strong, drink a wineglass of it with vodka every day.' I did just as he told me, and after a week I was quite fit again.

'Afterwards I saw the Brodiaga coming along. I thought: 'He'll expect to be treated.' So I stood treat for him. He said: 'Well, what did you think of it?'

"'I think it was a good trick, but I