in his mind. There had been uncle Mikhail Petrovich, popularly known as Mishka the Squabbler, one of the "horrid" members of the family, whom grandfather Piotr Ivanych had exiled to Golovliovo, where he had lived in the servants' quarters and eaten out of the same dish with Trezorka, the house dog. There had been Aunt Vera Mikhailovna, who had lived on the estate by her brother's favor and died of "moderate living"; for Arina Petrovna had begrudged her every mouthful at dinner and every billet of wood for the stove in her room. And a similar fate awaited him.

He foresaw an endless succession of joyless days losing themselves in a grey yawning abyss, and he involuntarily shut his eyes. Henceforth he would have to be alone with a wicked old woman, half dead in the stagnation of despotism. She would be the death of him before long, as sure as fate. Not a soul to speak to, not a place to visit. She would be everywhere, scornful, despotic, deadening. The thought of that inevitable future made his heart so heavy that he stopped under a tree in desperation, and struck his head against it several times. His entire life with all its farcical strutting, idleness, and buffoonery loomed up as if flooded with sudden light. Then he started on his way again. He felt there was nothing else left for him. The least of men can make some effort, can earn his bread. He alone was helpless. It was a new thought. He had been accustomed in thinking of his future to picture various prospects, but always prospects of wealth coupled with idleness, never prospects of work. And now the time had come when he had to pay for the wickedness and aimlessness of his existence. It was a bitter settlement, summed up in the terrible phrase: "She will be the end of me."

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the white Golovliovo belfry showed above the forest. The traveller's face grew pale, and his hands began to tremble. He took off his cap and crossed himself. The parable of the prodigal son and his return occurred to him, but he at once rejected the idea as a bit of self-delusion.

Finally, he noticed the boundary-post standing by the wayside, and presently he was treading the Golovliovo soil, the hateful soil that had borne him, an unloved child, that had reared him, sent him, hated, into the wide world, and was now receiving him, the unloved one, back into its arms again. The sun was high in the heavens and was ruthlessly scorching the boundless fields of Golovliovo. But Stepan Vladimirych was growing paler and shivering with ague.

At length he reached the churchyard, and here his courage failed utterly. The manor-house looked out from behind the trees as if nothing unpleasant had ever happened there; yet the sight of it worked on him like the vision of a Medusa head. His paternal abode seemed to be a tomb. "A tomb, tomb, tomb," he repeated unconsciously. He had not the courage to go straight to the house, but first called on the priest and sent him to break the news of his arrival and inquire whether his mother would receive him.

The priest's wife was very sympathetic and hastened to prepare an omelette. The village children gathered about him and stared at the master with wondering eyes. The peasants passing by lifted their hats in silence and looked at him curiously. One old servant ran up with the intention of kissing the master's hand. Everyone understood that a wastrel was before them, an unloved son who had returned to his hated home never to leave it except for the graveyard. At the thought of it the people were overwhelmed with a mingled feeling of pity and dread.

At last the priest returned and announced that the lady of the manor was ready to receive Stepan Vladimirych. Ten minutes later he was standing in her presence. Arina Petrovna met him severely and solemnly, and measured him icily from head to foot, but allowed herself no useless reproaches. She received him, not in the living room, but on the porch, and ordered the young master to be taken to his father through another entrance. The old man was dozing in his bed, under a white coverlet, in a white nightcap, all white like a corpse. When he felt the presence of his son he woke up and began to laugh idiotically.

"Well, friend, so now you are under the hag's paw," he cried, while his son kissed his hand. Then he crowed like a cock, burst out laughing again, and repeated several times: "She'll eat him up! She'll eat him up!" The phrase found echo in Stepan's soul.

His fears were justified. He was installed in a separate room in the wing that also housed the counting-room. He was given homespun underwear and an old discarded dressing-gown of his father's, which he put on immediately. The doors of the burial vault had opened, let him in, and closed again.

There now began a long succession of dull, ugly days, which Time's grey, yawning abyss swallowed up, one after the other. Arina Petrovna never received him, nor was he allowed to see his father. Three days after his arrival, his mother informed him through Finogey Ipatych, the bailiff, that he would receive board and clothing and also a pound of Faler's tobacco monthly. Stepan Vladimirych listened to the bailiff, and merely remarked:

"The hag! She's found out that Zhukov's tobacco costs two rubles, while Faler's is only one ruble ninety kopeks a pound. So she pockets ten kopeks a month."

The symptoms of the moral sobering that had appeared during the hours of his approaching Golovliovo on the country road, vanished. Frivolity reasserted its rights and was followed by an acceptance of the conditions his mother imposed upon him. The disquieting thought of the hopeless future, which had once pierced his mind, faded gradually away and finally was no more. The day and the evil thereof, the petty interests of existence in all its undisguised ugliness absorbed his entire being. What part, indeed, could his intentions and opinions play when the course of the rest of his life in all its details was laid out in advance in Arina Petrovna's brain?

All day long he walked to and fro in his room, pipe in mouth, humming bits of songs, passing unaccountably from church tunes to boisterous airs. If the village clerk happened to be in the office, he went up to him and engaged in a conversation, of which the chief topic was Arina Petrovna's income.

"What does she do with all her wealth?" he would exclaim wonderingly, having reached the sum of more than eighty thousand rubles. "My brothers' allowances are rather poor; she herself lives shabbily, and she feeds cured meats to father. She deposits the money in the bank, that's what she does with it."

On one occasion Finogey Ipatych came to deliver the taxes he had gathered, and the table was littered with paper money, and Stepan's eyes glittered.

"Ah, what a heap of money!" he exclaimed. "And it all flows right down her throat. As for giving her son some of these nice greenbacks, no, she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't say: 'Here, my son, you who are visited by sorrow, here is some cash for wine and tobacco.'"

This was usually followed by endless cynical talks about how he could win over his mother's heart.

"In Moscow," he held forth, "I used to meet a man who knew a magic word. If his mother refused to give him money he would utter 'the word,' and she instantly got cramps in her hands and feet, in fact all over."

"It must have been a spell, I suppose," remarked the village clerk.

"Well, whatever it may have been, it is gospel truth that there is such a 'word.' Another man told me this: 'Take,' he says, 'a frog, and put it into an anthill at midnight. By morning the ants will have gnawed it clean, so that only its skeleton will be left. Take the skeleton, and when it is in your pocket ask anything you wish of any woman, and she won't refuse you."

"Well, that's easy."

"The trouble is, one must first damn oneself forever. If it weren't for that, the old hag would be cringing before me."

Hours on end were spent in such talk, but no remedy was found. The preliminary condition