nate its genuine scents, and you swallow all sorts of
filth, wherefore there is trouble in your heads. That's why you are
not competent to do anything, and you are unhappy because of this
incompetence. Taraska. Yes. He must be about forty now. He is lost to
me! A galley-slave--is that my son? A blunt-snouted young pig. He would
not speak to his father, and--he stumbled."

"What did he do?" asked Lubov, eagerly listening to the old man's words.

"Who knows? It may be that now he cannot understand himself, if he
became sensible, and he must have become a sensible man; he's the son of
a father who's not stupid, and then he must have suffered not a little.
They coddle them, the nihilists! They should have turned them over
to me. I'd show them what to do. Into the desert! Into the isolated
places--march! Come, now, my wise fellows, arrange life there according
to your own will! Go ahead! And as authorities over them I'd station the
robust peasants. Well, now, honourable gentlemen, you were given to eat
and to drink, you were given an education--what have you learned? Pay
your debts, pray. Yes, I would not spend a broken grosh on them. I would
squeeze all the price out of them--give it up! You must not set a man at
naught. It is not enough to imprison him! You transgressed the law, and
are a gentleman? Never mind, you must work. Out of a single seed comes
an ear of corn, and a man ought not be permitted to perish without being
of use! An economical carpenter finds a place for each and every chip of
wood--just so must every man be profitably used up, and used up entire,
to the very last vein. All sorts of trash have a place in life, and man
is never trash. Eh! it is bad when power lives without reason, nor is
it good when reason lives without power. Take Foma now. Who is coming
there--give a look."

Turning around, Lubov noticed the captain of the "Yermak," Yefim, coming
along the garden path. He had respectfully removed his cap and bowed to
her. There was a hopelessly guilty expression on his face and he seemed
abashed. Yakov Tarasovich recognized him and, instantly grown alarmed,
he cried:

"Where are you coming from? What has happened?"

"I--I have come to you!" said Yefim, stopping short at the table, with a
low bow.

"Well, I see, you've come to me. What's the matter? Where's the
steamer?"

"The steamer is there!" Yefim thrust his hand somewhere into the air and
heavily shifted from one foot to the other.

"Wher