"Man makes it, not God!" cried Michael. Father Cyril's letter came into his mind, and he said in a low voice, "'If I make my bed in hell, Thou art there!'" The dying woman looked up at him with anguish in her eyes. "Thank God, Marfa died before we came here!" exclaimed Sergius, looking round with horror at the agonised forms and distorted faces of the women, whose mouths were open, gasping for breath in the suffocating atmosphere, and whose staring, feverish eyes wandered hopelessly in search of relief. In a corner, on a layer of straw, five children were huddled together. The eldest was about seven years old, the youngest about five months. They were tossing to and fro, and wailing with the peculiarly piteous cry of ailing children. Sergius went to them, and sat down on the floor with the baby in his arms, after he had soothed the elder children, and given each of them some tepid water to drink. "Their crying maddens me," said Anna; "all night long they were moaning, and I could do nothing for them, poor little creatures! We were locked up all night, with no nurse to help any one of us. One of the women died in the night, and lay there till the morning. Michael, this is the worst hell of all! I prayed to God to let me die too, but He did not hear me." "He must have heard you," Michael answered, "because He is here." "Not here! Not here!" cried Anna. "I'm only a boy, and I hardly know how to say it," answered Michael, "but if I was here, I'd rather think God was here too, knowing all about me, and all I had to bear, than think that the devil was reigning here, with nobody stronger than he was, like the Czar." "But how can God let it be?" she asked. "We don't know yet," replied Michael, looking round with appalled eyes, "but this I do know, I'd rather be here than be one of the people who send us here. God knows them too! Oh, I wish my father could come and pray for you!" "Do you pray for me," she said; "God will listen to an innocent soul like yours. Beseech Him to let me die this minute! Beseech Him to send the angel of death to sweep this place of all its misery. Let us all die at once, and then something will be done. But we go one by one, and nobody cares." Her voice fell into sobs. Michael was still kneeling beside her, and over him hung the yellow, withered face of an old woman, in the cot above listening eagerly to what was being said. "I dare not ask God that," he answered; "our Lord does not teach us to pray for things like that. He bade us say, 'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.' I can say our Lord's Prayer for you." "Say it," she whispered. The boy's clear young voice sounded distinctly through the ward, as he lifted up his head, and said "'Our Father!'"