for him, simple
parts of inanimate nature, but creatures with souls, full of life,
similar to himself, watching and listening to him as he watched and
listened to them.

Later on he made friends with an old man. He was a miner of a somewhat
sombre disposition, but his eyes always grew moist when the child ran
towards him. He would lay his wrinkled hand, hard as iron, tenderly on
the head of the little one, and, as he rested, tell him how one day our
Lord Jesus Christ had descended to the depths of this subterranean
kingdom, and since then remained there with the miners. "Jesus is in the
midst of us, I tell you," the old man would say dreamily, peering
intently into the darkness, as though his half-blind eyes could really
distinguish the divine Saviour there. As long as he was a child, Ivan
saw Him also, and seeing Him feared Him, because he knew that Jesus does
not love evil deeds and dark thoughts. Jesus is everywhere at once; He
has thousands of eyes at His disposal; He sees and knows the slightest
movements of men's hearts.

One day when the child was sitting on the old miner's knees, they heard
far off in the direction where Ivan's mother was working a dull shock--a
noise like a sigh escaping from the breast of Mother Earth herself. The
shock re-echoed in all the mine-shafts and smallest recesses of all the
galleries. The earth fell in in several places.

"Save us, Lord!" cried the old man, rising quickly. "Pray to God, little
one. A child's prayer avails much with Him."

Little Ivan knelt down, and prayed without knowing why or for what. All
his prayer consisted in repeating, "Kind Jesus!... Good Jesus!... Dear
old Jesus!" Since for him goodness was personified in the old miner, and
as on the other hand Jesus was the very incarnation of goodness, it
followed that Jesus must be old, very old. It was thus that the child
imagined Him, and under this aspect that he sometimes saw Him standing
in the darkness of the mine.

The subterranean shocks re-echoed to a great distance and did not cease
till they passed beyond the boundaries of the mine. Then only a vague
vibration remained in the air like the presentiment of a great calamity.
The old miner turned in the direction where Ivan's mother had been
working. He walked with uncertain steps and then returned hesitatingly
towards the child. When they reached the gallery they found it narrower
and contracted above where the earth had sunk. Presently they came to a
poi