don't want to do it a second time.'

"'You're right,' he said. 'Have you ever seen the cook draw the veins out of the meat when he's getting the inspector's cutlets ready?'

"'Oh yes! Rather!' I said.

"'Now, you see, if you stop here, they'll draw all the veins and all the strength out of you. You've saved a little money; go away from here, and don't look back.'

"I left the hospital, and went to get my 'time.' But it was a difficult business. 'Stop here,' they said to me, 'stop here, and we'll raise your wages.' And so on. But I didn't agree. 'Your money is good, but dear,' I answered. The inspector got very angry, and shouted, 'Ass!' And they counted it out to me: I had got a round sum of a thousand roubles, all but a hundred and fifty."

"Did you really drink that stuff, Maciej?"

"A-ah! It was the first medicine I ever took," he answered.

But the shoemaker, understanding my incredulity, set it aside by an excellent explanation:

"No fear! Even two bottles of toadstools wouldn't hurt a machine like that!"

Maciej disapproved of the expression.

"Am I a machine now? Why, you only see half of what I was!"

"Then, you were stouter formerly?"

"Oh yes! I tell you, I wasn't like this. What do I look like now? A greyhound grown thin! Is this an arm?" And he untwisted his shirt sleeve and showed us an arm of which a leg might have been jealous. "Is this a leg?" Drawing his wide trousers tight, he looked piteously at his leg measuring over a yard round. "I usedn't to be like this," he ended with a sigh.

Nothing could have given me more satisfaction than these sighs. But a good beginning had been made, for Maciej, who certainly very rarely experienced the relief of unburdening himself, was so excited that he required no stronger incentive than that I should listen to him with unfeigned interest. It was enough to repeat, "What then? Just so! Really!" oftener and more pressingly. Thus spurred on, each time Maciej's "Ha, ha!" became louder and his face redder, and when the samovar had boiled he declined to obey the shoemaker and would not pour out the tea.

"Can I never have a talk? When do I ever get a chance of speaking to anyone? You're in the shop; you know what to do and how to talk to people, but I don't. It's not only with those who come here; I can't do it even with our own people, I'm such a plain man. It's dull to be alone, and I'm losing flesh; but there's no one I can go to, for people get bored with me. The master here understands every word I say, and isn't surprised and doesn't laugh at anything. I can talk to him like one of my own family, and feel lighter at heart at once. Do pour out for yourself. I don't want that stupid tea."

Although shocked at this distinct subversion of the order of society, the shoemaker allowed himself to be mollified, and began to pour out tea. Maciej, freed from one of his most trying duties, became all the livelier.

We both settled ourselves on the sofa. Maciej was to tell me his past history from the beginning. He was as red as a peony, but, strange to say, he sat silent, and although I prompted him several times with, "Well, and what next, Maciej?" he did not speak. Yet his deep breathing showed that this silence did not mean speechlessness. On the contrary, it was thought slowly working and stirring him to expression.

Maciej sat upright, with his knees wide apart and both hands resting on them. He sat thus for some minutes, with eyes which seemed fixed on the far distance; he sat motionless as though he were already away in that distant scene which, possibly, was opening before him. Yet, when observed closely, his face was burning. I was on the point of putting a more urgent question to him, when Maciej, looking neither at me nor at the shoemaker, began as follows:

"You must have heard of a large river—it's swift and black—they call it Narew? Not far from that river there are three big villages, called Mocarze.

"I've seen many, many different villages, and I've looked at many different people. I've seen the big Tartar villages, and the Russian settlements, as large as towns, and the villages on the River Angara and behind Lake Baikal, and where the Poles are so well off;[4] but nowhere, nowhere have I seen villages like our Mocarze.

"There isn't a thing you can't find there. Everything's there. My God!" And Maciej stretched out his arms.

"And those meadows and fields and the hay timee! Oh! those young oak-woods, and the corn, too, like gold!

"Here everything is big, but somehow it's dreary. What can you see in the taiga? What's there to enjoy in the fields? It's like a grave all round you: a vulture crying above, a bear growling in the taiga, and that's all the pleasure you get! At home it's different.

"There, if you go out in the morning through the fields with the dew on them, and shout, it sounds like a bell ringing in the open air. You watch the cheerfulness of the animals, and listen to the birds chirping on the ground and above, and you feel cheerful too. And if you breathe the air coming from those fields and meadows, as if it came from a censer in church, you feel its strength going into you. I've never felt so strong anywhere as at sunrise at Mocarze, when I used to say 'Good-morning!' to the sun. Here the morning's no morning—there's no pleasure in it; none of the birds or animals or people know anything about it. At home it's different.

"I've seen so many countries; I've been through all this big Siberia, and a good bit of the Lake Baikal country, but I've never seen a country like ours anywhere. But I've learnt that since being here. Yes, here! Am I the only one? We've clever people at home—priests and gentlemen and peasants with heads on their shoulders—but none of them know what they have!"

"Each of these villages called Mocarze has its own name. They call the one that's the oldest, Korzeniste; the second, Suche; and the third, which is the newest, Mokry. I am from Mocarze-Suche.

"It's a big village. Pan Olszeski was our master, and we were his serfs. Everyone knows it's not very pleasant to be that. When I was about twenty, Olszeski took me into his service at the house.

"He was a very quick-tempered man, yellow, dry, and small—the very devil, I can tell you! He wasn't really bad, only when he was angry; but he got angry about everything, and then he'd just be beside himself with rage—oh my goodness! Yet not for long. He'd shout and run up and down and get yellower still; but when he'd finished you could say anything to him, and, though he'd tremble, he'd listen and say nothing. He was just. It can't be said that the young men liked him, but the older ones—the farmers—always told us: 'Don't take any notice of his shouting; his bark is worse than his bite.' And they were right. He never harmed and never worried people; but this I only knew later. At the time I only knew that Olszeski was bad-tempered, and I feared him like fire, and—well, every bad thing. But I don't know how it came about; the farther I went from him, the more he came after me. He was always at me, scolding, cursing, and shouting. But I remembered what my father had said: 'Don't take any notice of his being angry, but remember that he's just'; so I stood it—stood it and never said a word. And I should have stood it longer if Olszeski hadn't gone too far. But he said everything he could think of against me, and at last, on purpose to wound my feelings, he began to