avel grasped a
heavy hammer, and said curtly:

"Don't touch me!"

"What!" demanded his father, bending over the tall, slender figure of
his son like a shadow on a birch tree.

"Enough!" said Pavel. "I am not going to give myself up any more."

And opening his dark eyes wide, he waved the hammer in the air.

His father looked at him, folded his shaggy hands on his back, and,
smiling, said:

"All right." Then he drew a heavy breath and added: "Ah, you dirty
vermin!"

Shortly after this he said to his wife:

"Don't ask me for money any more. Pasha will feed you now."

"And you will drink up everything?" she ventured to ask.

"None of your business, dirty vermin!" From that time, for three
years, until his death, he did not notice, and did not speak to his son.

Vlasov had a dog as big and shaggy as himself. She accompanied him to
the factory every morning, and every evening she waited for him at the
gate. On holidays Vlasov started off on his round of the taverns. He
walked in silence, and stared into people's faces as if looking for
somebody. His dog trotted after him the whole day long. Returning home
drunk he sat down to supper, and gave his dog to eat from his own bowl.
He never beat her, never scolded, and never petted her. After supper
he flung the dishes from the table--if his wife was not quick enough to
remove them in time--put a bottle of whisky before him, and leaning his
back against the wall, began in a hoarse voice that spread anguish
about him to bawl a song, his mouth wide open and his eyes closed. The
doleful sounds got entangled in his mustache, knocking off the crumbs
of bread. He smoothed down the hair of his beard and mustache with his
thick fingers and sang--sang unintelligible words, long drawn out. The
melody recalled the wintry howl of wolves. He sang as long as there
was whisky in the bottle, then he dropped on his side upon the bench,
or let his head sink on the table, and slept in this way until the
whistle began to blow. The dog lay at his side.

When he died, he died hard. For five days, turned all black, he rolled
in his bed, gnashing his teeth, his eyes tightly closed. Sometimes he
would say to his wife: "Give me arsenic. Poison me."

She called a physician. He ordered hot poultices, but said an
operation was necessary and the patient must be taken at once to the
hospital.

"Go to the devil! I will die by myself, dirty vermin!" said Michael.

And when t