ience is more than fasting and prayer.

"I suppose you have forgotten all your learning?" observed Kuzmitchov.

"I should think so! Thank God, I have reached my eightieth year!
Something of philosophy and rhetoric I do remember, but languages
and mathematics I have quite forgotten."

Father Christopher screwed up his eyes, thought a minute and said
in an undertone:

"What is a substance? A creature is a self-existing object, not
requiring anything else for its completion."

He shook his head and laughed with feeling.

"Spiritual nourishment!" he said. "Of a truth matter nourishes the
flesh and spiritual nourishment the soul!"

"Learning is all very well," sighed Kuzmitchov, "but if we don't
overtake Varlamov, learning won't do much for us."

"A man isn't a needle--we shall find him. He must be going his
rounds in these parts."

Among the sedge were flying the three snipe they had seen before,
and in their plaintive cries there was a note of alarm and vexation
at having been driven away from the stream. The horses were steadily
munching and snorting. Deniska walked about by them and, trying to
appear indifferent to the cucumbers, pies, and eggs that the gentry
were eating, he concentrated himself on the gadflies and horseflies
that were fastening upon the horses' backs and bellies; he squashed
his victims apathetically, emitting a peculiar, fiendishly triumphant,
guttural sound, and when he missed them cleared his throat with an
air of vexation and looked after every lucky one that escaped death.

"Deniska, where are you? Come and eat," said Kuzmitchov, heaving a
deep sigh, a sign that he had had enough.

Deniska diffidently approached the mat and picked out five thick
and yellow cucumbers (he did not venture to take the smaller and
fresher ones), took two hard-boiled eggs that looked dark and were
cracked, then irresolutely, as though afraid he might get a blow
on his outstretched hand, touched a pie with his finger.

"Take them, take them," Kuzmitchov urged him on.

Deniska took the pies resolutely, and, moving some distance away,
sat down on the grass with his back to the chaise. At once there
was such a sound of loud munching that even the horses turned round
to look suspiciously at Deniska.

After his meal Kuzmitchov took a sack containing something out of
the chaise and said to Yegorushka:

"I am going to sleep, and you mind that no one takes the sack from
under my head."

Father Christopher to