ou his regards, and Pavel, who also sends you his regards and
begs you not to be alarmed. As a man travels on his way, he says, the
jails constitute his resting places, established and maintained by the
solicitous authorities! Now, granny, let us get to the point. Do you
know how many people were arrested yesterday?"

"I do not. Why, were there any others arrested besides Pavel?" she
exclaimed.

"He was the forty-ninth!" calmly interjected Yegor Ivanovich. "And we
may expect about ten more to be taken! This gentleman here, for
example."

"Yes; me, too!" said Samoylov with a frown.

Nilovna somehow felt relieved.

"He isn't there alone," she thought.

When she had dressed herself, she entered the room and, smiling
bravely, said:

"I guess they won't detain them long, if they arrested so many."

"You are right," assented Yegor Ivanovich; "and if we can manage to
spoil this mess for them, we can make them look altogether like fools.
This is the way it is, granny. If we were now to cease smuggling our
literature into the factory, the gendarmes would take advantage of such
a regrettable circumstance, and would use it against Pavel and his
comrades in jail."

"How is that? Why should they?" the mother cried in alarm.

"It's very plain, granny," said Yegor Ivanovich softly. "Sometimes
even gendarmes reason correctly. Just think! Pavel was, and there
were books and there were papers; Pavel is not, and no books and no
papers! Ergo, it was Pavel who distributed these books! Aha! Then
they'll begin to eat them all alive. Those gendarmes dearly love so to
unman a man that what remains of him is only a shred of himself, and a
touching memory."

"I see, I see," said the mother dejectedly. "O God! What's to be
done, then?"

"They have trapped them all, the devil take them!" came Samoylov's
voice from the kitchen. "Now we must continue our work the same as
before, and not only for the cause itself, but also to save our
comrades!"

"And there is no one to do the work," added Yegor, smiling. "We have
first-rate literature. I saw to that myself. But how to get it into
the factory, that's the question!"

"They search everybody at the gates now," said Samoylov.

The mother divined that something was expected of her. She understood
that she could be useful to her son, and she hastened to ask:

"Well, now? What are we to do?"

Samoylov stood in the doorway to answer.

"Pelagueya Nilovna, you know