ust so! And now I
see all the people in a different way. I am grieved for them all! I
cannot understand it; but my heart turned softer when I recognized that
there is truth in men, and that not all are to blame for their
foulness and filth."

He was silent as if listening to something within himself. Then he
said in a low voice and thoughtfully:

"That's how truth lives."

She looked at him tenderly.

"May God protect you!" she sighed. "It is a dangerous change that has
come upon you."

When he had fallen asleep, the mother rose carefully from her bed and
came gently into her son's room. Pavel's swarthy, resolute, stern face
was clearly outlined against the white pillow. Pressing her hand to
her bosom, the mother stood at his bedside. Her lips moved mutely, and
great tears rolled down her cheeks.

CHAPTER III

Again they lived in silence, distant and yet near to each other. Once,
in the middle of the week, on a holiday, as he was preparing to leave
the house he said to his mother:

"I expect some people here on Saturday."

"What people?" she asked.

"Some people from our village, and others from the city."

"From the city?" repeated the mother, shaking her head. And suddenly
she broke into sobs.

"Now, mother, why this?" cried Pavel resentfully. "What for?"

Drying her face with her apron, she answered quietly:

"I don't know, but it is the way I feel."

He paced up and down the room, then halting before her, said:

"Are you afraid?"

"I am afraid," she acknowledged. "Those people from the city--who
knows them?"

He bent down to look in her face, and said in an offended tone, and, it
seemed to her, angrily, like his father:

"This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they
take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as
long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh.
We must grow bold; it is time!

"It's all the same," he said, as he turned from her; "they'll meet in
my house, anyway."

"Don't be angry with me!" the mother begged sadly. "How can I help
being afraid? All my life I have lived in fear!"

"Forgive me!" was his gentler reply, "but I cannot do otherwise," and
he walked away.

For three days her heart was in a tremble, sinking in fright each time
she remembered that strange people were soon to come to her house. She
could not picture them to herself, but it seemed to her they were
terribl