e entrance of the Voskressensky mine stood a group of miners. All
were quite silent.

It was still dark, for the autumn days begin late. Heavy grey clouds
glided slowly over the sky, in which the first streaks of dawn were
hardly visible. These clouds glided so low that they seemed to wish to
lie on the earth in order to hide this black hole, this well-like
orifice which was about to swallow up the miners one by one. The air was
saturated with a cloud of damp dust, particles of which fell on the
men's hair and faces. The miners wore leather jerkins, and small lamps,
whose light flickered fitfully, hung at their belts. An imaginative
person might have thought that they trembled with fear at having to
descend into the heavy dense darkness of the mine.

"Listen, old man! You can never go down alone," said the young overseer
to an old miner who was of tall stature, thin and withered. His long
grey beard fell in disarray over his hollow chest, and his breath came
and went with a thin whistling sound, as though the damp air of this
dark morning found as much difficulty in entering as in leaving it. The
features of the old miner's face were strongly marked, and his two black
eyes burned in the depths of their sockets with a brilliant, almost
fantastic light. This death's-head seemed almost buried from sight
between two very high shoulders. When he walked, his back was arched,
and his whole long body leaned forward, so that he seemed to be looking
for something he had lost, or to be picking his steps very carefully.
His feeble arms hung languidly by his side, and his legs tottered and
gave way every moment under the weight of his body, slight as it was.

"You will never be able to descend the ladders! We will put you into the
basket! Hullo! you fellows over there, come and help to start old
Ivan!" the overseer called to the rest.

"Here we are, Father Ivan!" they cried, saying to each other jocosely,
"Fancy his wishing to go down the ladders with us!"

The old miner turned towards them. It was a long time ago since he had
been born in a mine about five versts distant which had been
subsequently closed. His mother, who had lost her husband by the
falling-in of one of the mine-galleries, continued to work in the same
gallery after it had been repaired. Ivan had been born in the eternal
darkness. His first cry had been drowned by the noise of blasting rocks,
his first glance met nothing but the gloom of the subterranean galler