"But what about the persecutors?" said Father Cyril. "And I am on their side. Alexis, it will break my heart!" They were silent for some minutes. "I fear this will bring fresh trouble," said the Batoushka, "but I will send a report at once to the archbishop. You are sure Michael did not strike the Starosta's grandson?" "He confesses he would have done it," replied Alexis, "if he had not broken the whip and thrown it away the first moment. But who will believe him?" "I will go and see Marfa first thing in the morning," said Father Cyril. "Little Clava and your Velia are in there," he added, nodding towards the kitchen; "they are dear children to us." The children had just finished singing, and pattering steps came towards the door to fetch Father Cyril to supper. He hastened to intercept them and send them back; for no heretic parents were permitted to hold any intercourse with the children taken from them. CHAPTER XI A HARD WINTER FATHER CYRIL'S report to the archbishop did no good. The Starosta Okhrim, mad with rage, went to Kovylsk, and had a personal interview with Father Paissy, at the consistory. This priest had a special interest in the suppression of Stundism at Knishi. Some few years before he had been present at an outbreak of popular prejudice, excited by himself, which had resulted in the death of a Stundist woman named Ooliana Rodenko. Her son Paul, and Paraska's husband Demyan, had been exiled to Siberia, with other prominent men among the Stundists. If these sharp measures failed to root out heresy, they appeared almost like crimes. Father Paissy was resolved to attain his object. The end justified the means. But what if the end was not achieved? This time he determined to stamp out Stundism, once for all, in Knishi. If Father Cyril failed to win the heretics back to the Orthodox Church, they must be exterminated. All the men of the Stundist households, nine in number, were arrested, and carried off to the prison in Kovylsk. The women were left without their natural protectors, and without breadwinners in their desolated homes. No one was left to do the necessary winter work except themselves, and the children between ten and fifteen years of age. Alexis Ivanoff gone, Michael was left with all the toil and care of the farm upon his shoulders, shared only by Paraska, who, under this new calamity, shook off the lethargy of her despair, and showed herself full of energy and resource. Tatiania, too, roused herself from the melancholy that had possessed her since the loss of little Clava, and she went from house to house comforting and encouraging the other women in the trouble still new to them. It was an old trouble to her, for it was nearly twelve months since her husband, Khariton Kondraty, had been imprisoned. The Starosta, Okhrim, and his grandson paraded the village street with insolent triumph, but Father Cyril kept the day of arrest as a day of fasting and prayer in the solitude of the church vestry.