my companion
when I put out the candle and went to bed. "After early mass, the
procession will go in boats from the Monastery to the Hermitage."

Raising his right eyebrow and putting his head on one side, he
prayed before the ikons, and, without undressing, lay down on his
little sofa.

"Yes," he said, turning over on the other side.

"Why yes?" I asked.

"When I accepted orthodoxy in Novotcherkassk my mother was looking
for me in Rostov. She felt that I meant to change my religion," he
sighed, and went on: "It is six years since I was there in the
province of Mogilev. My sister must be married by now."

After a short silence, seeing that I was still awake, he began
talking quietly of how they soon, thank God, would give him a job,
and that at last he would have a home of his own, a settled position,
his daily bread secure. . . . And I was thinking that this man would
never have a home of his own, nor a settled position, nor his daily
bread secure. He dreamed aloud of a village school as of the Promised
Land; like the majority of people, he had a prejudice against a
wandering life, and regarded it as something exceptional, abnormal
and accidental, like an illness, and was looking for salvation in
ordinary workaday life. The tone of his voice betrayed that he was
conscious of his abnormal position and regretted it. He seemed as
it were apologizing and justifying himself.

Not more than a yard from me lay a homeless wanderer; in the rooms
of the hostels and by the carts in the courtyard among the pilgrims
some hundreds of such homeless wanderers were waiting for the
morning, and further away, if one could picture to oneself the whole
of Russia, a vast multitude of such uprooted creatures was pacing
at that moment along highroads and side-tracks, seeking something
better, or were waiting for the dawn, asleep in wayside inns and
little taverns, or on the grass under the open sky. . . . As I fell
asleep I imagined how amazed and perhaps even overjoyed all these
people would have been if reasoning and words could be found to
prove to them that their life was as little in need of justification
as any other. In my sleep I heard a bell ring outside as plaintively
as though shedding bitter tears, and the lay brother calling out
several times:

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us! Come to mass!"

When I woke up my companion was not in the room. It was sunny and
there was a murmur of the crowds through th