Then there were the packets of needles for the women, and the dolls for the little girls. Such needles and dolls had never been seen in Knishi; surely they would open every door and every heart to him. There was Marina's little girl, Velia's chief playfellow. He had brought an English doll for her precisely like Velia's. Yarina had been great friends with his mother, and he had a memento to give to her, sent by Catherine herself. The first morning after his home-coming, he filled his pockets with his presents, and giving one doll to Velia, bade her take the other one in her arms. He started off joyously to Knishi, but as he was turning down the road leading to Yarina's farm, Velia drew him back. "We must not go there," she said, with a sob. "Why not?" asked Michael. "Okhrim is Starosta now," she answered, "and he says I mustn't play with Sofia any more. He is her grandfather, you know. Unless I cross myself, and bow to the icons," she added, looking up to him with eyes full of tears. "You must not do that," said Michael, his bright boyish face clouding suddenly. "Oh no!" replied the little girl. "But oh, I miss Sofia so!" The tears were rolling down her cheeks, but a moment afterwards Velia looked up again with a smile. "But I shan't mind now," she continued, clasping Michael's hand with all her might; "I have my own big brother now." "Does nobody play with you, my Velia?" he asked. "Only the other Stundist children," she said; "and they don't let us go to school now. Father Cyril would let us go, but Father Vasili got an order, just before he died, to say the Stundist children must not go to Orthodox schools if they did not go to church. Father Cyril cannot get it altered." "I'll go and see Sergius," cried Michael, "and you must give Sofia's doll to little Clava." "Little Clava will love it," said Velia, "but oh, I am so sorry for Sofia. We must never let her know it was brought all the way from Scotland for her, and given away to another girl." The house belonging to Khariton Kondraty, the father of Michael's chief friend, Sergius, was much smaller and poorer than the farmhouse where Alexis lived. It lay a little way apart from the village, and near to the steppe, a part of it so thickly carpeted with flowers that not a blade of grass or an inch of soil could be seen. Long rows of beehives lay under a hedge, which sheltered them from the north wind. Khariton Kondraty had taken up the business of Loukyan, an old deacon who had died from ill-usage in prison at the last outbreak of persecution in Knishi. He maintained himself and his family chiefly by the sale of honey and wax, and since he had been imprisoned in Kovylsk, his son Sergius, a boy about the same age as Michael, and his daughter Marfa, a girl of twelve, had proved themselves quite capable of managing the bees, and tilling the small plot of ground belonging to their father.