e, that I might
contemplate thence the little dwelling in which alone, though lost amid
the earth's immensity, the windows were not blind and black as in its
fellow huts, but showed, burning over the head of a dead human being,
the fire which humanity had conquered for humanity's benefit.

And that heart which had ceased to beat in the dead man--had everything
conceived in life by that heart found due expression in a world
poverty, stricken of heart-conceived ideas? I knew that the man just
passed away had been but a plain and insignificant mortal, yet as I
reflected upon even the little that he had done, his labour loomed
before me as greater than prowess of larger magnitude. Yes, to my mind
there recurred the immature, battered ears of corn lying in the ruts of
the steppe track, the swallows traversing the blue sky above the
golden, brocaded grain, the kite hovering in the void over the
landscape's vast periphery.....

And along with these thoughts, there struck upon my ears a whistling of
pinions as the shadow of a bird flitted across the brilliant,
dew-bespangled green of the forecourt, and five cocks crowed in
succession, and a flock of geese announced the fact of their awakening,
and a cow lowed, and the gate of the cattle-pen creaked.

And with that I fell to thinking how I should like really to go out on
to the steppe, and there to fall asleep under a warm, dry bank.

As for the deacon, he was still slumbering at my feet--slumbering with
his breast, the breast of a prize-fighter, turned uppermost, and his
fine, golden shock of hair falling like a nimbus around his head, and
hot, fat, flushed red features and gaping mouth and ceaselessly
twitching moustache. In passing, I had noticed that his hands were
long, and that they were set upon shovel-shaped wrists.

Next I found myself imagining the scene as the powerful figure of this
man embraced a woman. Probably her face would become lost to sight in
his beard, until nothing of her features remained visible. Then, when
the beard began to tickle her, she would throw back her head, and
laugh. And the children that such a man might have begotten!

All this only made it the more painful and disagreeable to me to
reflect that the breast of a human being of such a type should be
bearing a burden of sorrow. Surely naught but joy should have been
present therein!

Meanwhile, the old woman's gentle face was still peering at me through
the doorway, and presently the f