with you?"

He almost began to cry at his wife. The midwife was bustling about him;
shaking the crying child in the air. She spoke to him reassuringly, but
he heard nothing--he could not turn his eyes away from the frightful
face of his wife. Her lips were moving, and he heard words spoken in
a low voice, but could not understand them. Sitting on the edge of the
bed, he spoke in a dull and timid voice: "Just think of it! He cannot
do without you; he's an infant! Gather strength! Drive this thought away
from you! Drive it away."

He talked, yet he understood he was speaking useless words. Tears welled
up within him, and in his breast there came a feeling heavy as stone and
cold as ice.

"Forgive me. Goodbye! Take care. Look out. Don't drink," whispered
Natalya, soundlessly.

The priest came, and, covering her face with something, and sighing,
began to read gentle, beseeching words:

"Oh God, Almighty Lord, who cureth every disease, cure also Thy servant
Natalya, who has just given birth to a child; and restore her from the
bed on which she now lies, for in the words of David, 'We indulge in
lawlessness and are wicked in Thine eyes."'

The old man's voice was interrupted now and then, his thin face was
stern and from his clothes came the odour of rock-rose.

"Guard the infant born of her, guard him from all possible temptation,
from all possible cruelty, from all possible storms, from evil spirits,
night and day."

Ignat listened to the prayer, and wept silently. His big, hot tears fell
on the bare hand of his wife. But the hand, evidently, did not feel that
the tears were dropping upon it: it remained motionless, and the skin
did not tremble from the fall of the tears. After the prayer Natalya
became unconscious and a day later she died, without saying another
word--she died just as quietly as she had lived. Having arranged
a pompous funeral, Ignat christened his son, named him Foma, and
unwillingly gave his boy into the family of the godfather, his old
friend Mayakin, whose wife, too, had given birth to a child not long
before. The death of his wife had sown many gray hairs in Ignat's dark
beard, but in the stern glitter of his eyes appeared a new expression,
gentle, clear and mild.

CHAPTER II

MAYAKIN lived in an enormous two-story house near a big palisade, where
sturdy, old spreading linden trees were growing magnificently. The rank
branches covered the windows with a dense, dark embroidery, and t