"I would take them all if I could," said Father Cyril, "but I will find the best houses I can for every one of them. Yarina will take two, I am sure. Then there are seven or eight more. The worst part of the order is that the parents are to have no intercourse whatever with the children, and not in any way to interfere with their training. But they will live in the same village, and see them from time to time, though at a distance. They will know they are all under my protection, and they can always come to the church-house and hear from me, or the Matoushka, of their welfare. Oh, I will do my best for them." "You will teach them no false religion," said Alexis. "Oh, as for religion," replied Father Cyril, "they must come to church, and be brought up to observe the Orthodox rites and accept the Orthodox doctrines. There is no way to escape that, but, Alexis Ivanoff, there is salvation to be found in every Church." The telega stopped at the church-house after nightfall. Father Cyril called to Alexis to come to look through the uncurtained window. There, on a rug near the stove, sat Velia, with Father Cyril's two little daughters, one on each side of her. The children's heads were close together, and their faces shone in the lamplight. They were laughing merrily, and the Matoushka was laughing too. "God bless them!" cried Father Cyril, as he grasped Alexis Ivanoff's hand. "God bless you!" replied Alexis. CHAPTER X MOTHERS AND CHILDREN BUT to get little Clava away from her mother, Tatiania, was a hard task, almost an impossible one. The other parents recognised the absolute impossibility of evading the order of the consistory, and they listened submissively to the arrangements made for their children by the Batoushka, who was supported by Alexis Ivanoff. But Tatiania would listen to no reasoning or persuasion. Her husband had been in prison for nine months, and but for Sergius and Marfa, who had done all the work on their land, and with their beehives, the family would have fallen into dire poverty. They were, of course, much poorer than they had been in former years. But she would not give up her darling, she declared—no, not if the archbishop himself came to take her away. The Matoushka came to entreat her to trust little Clava to her, but in vain. "Oh, foolish woman!" cried Paraska to her. "You'd know where she was, and how kind they were to her, and you'd see her in the street, and watch her growing up and changing into a girl. And I shouldn't know my boys now if I saw them. They were babies when they took them from me eight years ago, and now—! No, I'd pass them in the road and not know them for my own sons." It was not until a letter came from Khariton Kondraty, written in his prison cell in Kovylsk, bidding his wife give up the child, that Tatiania yielded, and little Clava went to the church-house, where Velia was already settled.