pect, listens to everything--he is more like a
pretty girl than a fellow! And yet he does not seem to be stupid!"

"No, there's nothing particularly stupid about him," said Mayakin.

"It looks as though he were waiting for something--as though some kind
of shroud were covering his eyes. His late mother groped on earth in the
same way.

"Just look, there's Afrikanka Smolin, but two years older than my
boy--what a man he has become! That is, it is difficult to tell whether
he is his father's head or his father his. He wants to go to some
factory to study. He swears:

"'Eh,' says he, 'papa, you have not taught me enough.' Yes. While mine
does not express himself at all. Oh Lord!"

"Look here," Mayakin advised him, "you had better push him head foremost
into some active business! I assure you! Gold is tested in fire. We'll
see what his inclinations are when at liberty. Send him out on the
Kama--alone."

"To give him a trial?"

"Well, he'll do some mischief--you'll lose something--but then we'll
know what stuff he is made of."

"Indeed--I'll send him off," Ignat decided.

And thus in the spring, Ignat sent his son off on the Kama with two
barges laden with corn. The barges were led by Gordyeeff's steamer
"Philezhny," under the command of Foma's old acquaintance, the former
sailor Yefim--now, Yefim Ilyich, a squarely built man of about thirty
with lynx-like eyes--a sober-minded, steady and very strict captain.

They sailed fast and cheerfully, because all were contented. At first
Foma was proud of the responsible commission with which he had been
charged. Yefim was pleased with the presence of the young master, who
did not rebuke or abuse him for each and every oversight; and the happy
frame of mind of the two most important persons on the steamer reflected
in straight rays on the entire crew. Having left the place where they
had taken in their cargo of corn in April, the steamer reached the place
of its destination in the beginning of May, and the barges were anchored
near the shore with the steamer at their side. Foma's duty was to
deliver the corn as soon as possible, and receiving the payments, start
off for Perm, where a cargo of iron was awaiting him, which Ignat had
undertaken to deliver at the market.

The barges stood opposite a large village, near a pine forest, about two
versts distant from the shore. On the very next day after their arrival,
a big and noisy crowd of women and peasants, on foot and on