e village aroused attention. Its
walls already felt the regard of scores of suspecting eyes. The motley
wings of rumor hovered restlessly above them.

People tried to surprise the secret hidden within the house by the
ravine. They peeped into the windows at night. Now and then somebody
would rap on the pane, and quickly take to his heels in fright.

Once the tavern keeper stopped Vlasova on the street. He was a dapper
old man, who always wore a black silk neckerchief around his red,
flabby neck, and a thick, lilac-colored waistcoat of velvet around his
body. On his sharp, glistening nose there always sat a pair of glasses
with tortoise-shell rims, which secured him the sobriquet of "bony
eyes."

In a single breath and without awaiting an answer, he plied Vlasova
with dry, crackling words:

"How are you, Pelagueya Nilovna, how are you? How is your son?
Thinking of marrying him off, hey? He's a youth full ripe for
matrimony. The sooner a son is married off, the safer it is for his
folks. A man with a family preserves himself better both in the spirit
and the flesh. With a family he is like mushrooms in vinegar. If I
were in your place I would marry him off. Our times require a strict
watch over the animal called man; people are beginning to live in their
brains. Men have run amuck with their thoughts, and they do things
that are positively criminal. The church of God is avoided by the
young folk; they shun the public places, and assemble in secret in
out-of-the-way corners. They speak in whispers. Why speak in
whispers, pray? All this they don't dare say before people in the
tavern, for example. What is it, I ask? A secret? The secret place
is our holy church, as old as the apostles. All the other secrets
hatched in the corners are the offspring of delusions. I wish you good
health."

Raising his hand in an affected manner, he lifted his cap, and waving
it in the air, walked away, leaving the mother to her perplexity.

Vlasova's neighbor, Marya Korsunova, the blacksmith's widow, who sold
food at the factory, on meeting the mother in the market place also
said to her:

"Look out for your son, Pelagueya!"

"What's the matter?"

"They're talking!" Marya tendered the information in a hushed voice.
"And they don't say any good, mother of mine! They speak as if he's
getting up a sort of union, something like those Flagellants--sects,
that's the name! They'll whip one another like the Flagella