the cottage,
where her things had been left on a bench close by the place where
Stepan Trofimovitch had seated himself. Among them was a portfolio,
at which he remembered he had looked with curiosity on going in, and a
pack, not very large, of American leather. From this pack she took out
two nicely bound books with a cross engraved on the cover, and offered
them to Stepan Trofimovitch.

"_Et... mais je crois que c'est l'Evangile..._ with the greatest
pleasure.... Ah, now I understand.... _Vous etes ce qu'on appelle_ a
gospel-woman; I've read more than once.... Half a rouble?"

"Thirty-five kopecks," answered the gospel-woman. "With the greatest
pleasure. _Je n'ai rien contre l'Evangile,_ and I've been wanting to
re-read it for a long time...."

The idea occurred to him at the moment that he had not read the gospel
for thirty years at least, and at most had recalled some passages of it,
seven years before, when reading Renan's "Vie de Jesus." As he had no
small change he pulled out his four ten-rouble notes--all that he
had. The woman of the house undertook to get change, and only then
he noticed, looking round, that a good many people had come into the
cottage, and that they had all been watching him for some time past, and
seemed to be talking about him. They were talking too of the fire in the
town, especially the owner of the cart who had only just returned from
the town with the cow. They talked of arson, of the Shpigulin men.

"He said nothing to me about the fire when he brought me along, although
he talked of everything," struck Stepan Trofimovitch for some reason.

"Master, Stepan Trofimovitch, sir, is it you I see? Well, I never should
have thought it!... Don't you know me?" exclaimed a middle-aged man who
looked like an old-fashioned house-serf, wearing no beard and dressed
in an overcoat with a wide turn-down collar. Stepan Trofimovitch was
alarmed at hearing his own name.

"Excuse me," he muttered, "I don't quite remember you."

"You don't remember me. I am Anisim, Anisim Ivanov. I used to be in the
service of the late Mr. Gaganov, and many's the time I've seen you, sir,
with Varvara Petrovna at the late Avdotya Sergyevna's. I used to go to
you with books from her, and twice I brought you Petersburg sweets from
her...."

"Why, yes, I remember you, Anisim," said Stepan Trofimovitch, smiling.
"Do you live here?"

"I live near Spasov, close to the V---- Monastery, in the service
of Marta Sergyevna,