er at least as your mistress!'

"Do you understand? He offered his own daughter--just think of it! A
daughter--as a mistress! The devil knows what that is! Eh? The man, of
course, became indignant and began abusing the peasant. But the peasant
spoke to him reasonably:

"'Your Honour! Of what use is she to me at this time? Utterly useless.
I have,' says he, 'three boys--they will be working men; it is necessary
to keep them up. Give me,' says he, 'ten roubles for the girl, and that
will improve my lot and that of my boys.'

"How is that? Eh? It is simply terrible, I tell you."

"No good!" sighed Yefim. "As they say--hunger will break through stone
walls. The stomach, you see, has its own laws."

This story called forth in Foma a great incomprehensible interest in the
fate of the girl, and the youth hastened to enquire of the receiver:

"Well, did the man buy her?"

"Of course not!" exclaimed the receiver, reproachfully.

"Well, and what became of her?"

"Some good people took pity on her--and provided for her."

"A-h!" drawled Foma, and suddenly he said firmly and angrily: "I would
have given that peasant such a thrashing! I would have broken his head!"
And he showed the receiver his big tightly-clenched fist.

"Eh! What for?" cried the receiver in a sickly, loud voice, tearing his
spectacles from his eyes. "You do not understand the motive."

"I do understand it!" said Foma, with an obstinate shake of his head.

"But what could he do? It came to his mind."

"How can one allow himself to sell a human being?"

"Ah! It is brutal, I agree with you."

"And a girl at that! I would have given him the ten roubles!"

The receiver waved his hand hopelessly and became silent. His gesture
confused Foma. He arose from his seat, walked off to the railing
and looked down at the deck of the barge, which was covered with an
industriously working crowd of people. The noise intoxicated him, and
the uneasy something, which was rambling in his soul, was now defined
into a powerful desire to work, to have the strength of a giant, to
possess enormous shoulders and put on them at one time a hundred bags of
rye, that every one looking at him might be astonished.

"Come now, hurry up there!" he shouted down in a ringing voice. A few
heads were raised to him, some faces appeared before him, and one of
them--the face of a dark-eyed woman--smiled at him a gentle and enticing
smile. Something flared up in his breast at this smile