g for
himself and eating only rye-bread, or rolls prepared for the Church. He
had been advised long since that he had no right to neglect his health,
and he was given wholesome, though Lenten, food. He ate sparingly,
though much more than he had done, and often he ate with much pleasure,
and not as formerly with aversion and a sense of guilt. So it was now.
He had some gruel, drank a cup of tea, and ate half a white roll.

The attendant went away, and Father Sergius remained alone under the elm
tree.

It was a wonderful May evening, when the birches, aspens, elms, wild
cherries, and oaks, had just burst into foliage.

The bush of wild cherries behind the elm tree was in full bloom and had
not yet begun to shed its blossoms, and the nightingales--one quite near
at hand and two or three others in the bushes down by the river--burst
into full song after some preliminary twitters. From the river came the
far-off songs of peasants returning, no doubt, from their work. The sun
was setting behind the forest, its last rays glowing through the leaves.
All that side was brilliant green, the other side with the elm tree was
dark. The cockchafers flew clumsily about, falling to the ground when
they collided with anything.

After supper Father Sergius began to repeat a silent prayer: 'O Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us!' and then he read a psalm,
and suddenly in the middle of the psalm a sparrow flew out from the
bush, alighted on the ground, and hopped towards him chirping as it
came, but then it took fright at something and flew away. He said a
prayer which referred to his abandonment of the world, and hastened to
finish it in order to send for the merchant with the sick daughter. She
interested him in that she presented a distraction, and because both she
and her father considered him a saint whose prayers were efficacious.
Outwardly he disavowed that idea, but in the depths of his soul he
considered it to be true.

He was often amazed that this had happened, that he, Stepan Kasatsky,
had come to be such an extraordinary saint and even a worker of
miracles, but of the fact that he was such there could not be the
least doubt. He could not fail to believe in the miracles he himself
witnessed, beginning with the sick boy and ending with the old woman who
had recovered her sight when he had prayed for her.

Strange as it might be, it was so. Accordingly the merchant's daughter
interested him as a new individua