He will not take his place in church; he will not pass through the Sacred Gates. When service is going on, he crouches in the darkest corner of the church, and listens to the prayers and chants with his head upon the ground. He likes to be spurned and buffeted by the crowd. A servant of every one, he is only too happy if folk will order him about; and when he can find a wretch so poor and dirty that every one else shuns him, he will take that dirty wretch to be his lord. In winter, when the snow lies deep on the ground, he will sleep in the open yard; in summer, when the heat is fierce, he will expose his shaven crown to the sun. He loves to be scorned, and spit upon, and robbed. Like all his class, he is fond of money; and this love of dross he turns into his sharpest discipline of soul. Twisting plaits of birch-bark into creels and crates, he vends these articles to boatmen and pilgrims at two kopecks apiece; ties the copper coins in a filthy rag; and then creeps away to hide his money under a stone, in the hope that some one will watch him and steal it when he is gone. The first monk who held the chair of abjectness in Solovetsk, before Nikita came in, was a miracle of self-denial, and his death was commemorated by an act of the rarest grace. Father Nahum is that elder and worthier sacrifice to heaven. Nahum is said to have been more abject in manner, more self-denying in habit, than Nikita; being a person of higher order, and having more method in his scheme of sacrifice. He abstained from the refuse of fish, as too great a delicacy for sinful men. He liked to sleep in the snow. He was only too happy to lie down at a beggar's door. Once, when he slept outside the convent gates all night, some humorous brother suggested that perhaps he had been looking out for girls; and on hearing of this ribald jest he stripped himself nearly naked, poked a hole in the ice, and sat down in the frozen lake until his feet were chilled to the bone. A wing of the convent once took fire, and the monks began to run about with pails; but Nahum rolled a ball of snow in his palms and threw it among the flames; and as the tongues lapped higher and higher, he ran to the church, threw himself on the floor, and begged the Lord to put them out. Instantly, say the monks, the fire died down. An archimandrite saw him groping in a garden for potatoes, tearing up the roots with his fingers. "That is cold work, is it not, Nahum?" asked his kindly chief. "Humph!" said the monk; "try it." When the present emperor came to Solovetsk, and every one was anxious to do him service, Nahum walked up to him with a wooden cup, half full of dirty water, saying, "Drink; it is good enough."