"Christ came to save us from our sins," answered his father, "not from sorrow. 'In the world ye shall have tribulation,' He said; and the history of His people has been the same through all generations, and in all countries. The Church has always been built on the graves of the martyrs. As we beat out the grain from the straw with our flails, stroke after stroke, so will the world smite us. But God will gather His corn into His granary; not one grain lost, only the chaff left. The flail is the world, my son, but God's hand holds it." "Are they beginning the persecution, father?" asked Michael. "It has never ceased," answered Alexis, "but now it is growing hotter. Okhrim has been made Starosta in Savely's room, and there is not a harder or more cruel man in all Knishi. Father Cyril can do little to control him. He is a saint and a Christian, our Batoushka, but Okhrim is his enemy. Khariton Kondraty was taken to Kovylsk, and thrown into prison there last week. I expect to be the next. But he leaves me alone, because I pay every fine he imposes; and the farm is not mine, I only pay rent for it. It belongs to Paul Rodenko, who was exiled years ago. Old Karpo will take care it is not confiscated, because it will go to his daughter, Paul's wife, if he dies first. Still, the hour must come for me at last." Silence fell upon them again. Michael had a vivid idea of what persecution meant in Knishi. Instead of the fairy tales and ballads which other children heard from their elders, he had listened all through his childhood to stories of martyrs—martyrs in Scotland, and martyrs in his own country. Even the dear home in which they dwelt had been the scene of martyrdom; and the bench on which they sat beside the stove had been the deathbed of Paul Rodenko's mother. But hitherto he had thought of persecution as a thing of the past, or far-off in other villages; now it stood face to face with him. Yet life was very pleasant for the time being. He drew in deep breaths of the sweet, fresh air of the spring, and looked up into the clear blue of the sky, and gazed across the vast, sea-like plain. His heart beat high with the mere joy of living. Courage and hope and an unquestioning faith in his father filled his mind. Whatever troubles might be coming, surely he could bear them as his forefathers among the heathery mountains of Scotland had borne theirs. When he came to think of it, only a small number of the Covenanters had actually perished; most of them won through, and secured freedom for themselves, and their children after them. It would be the same with the Stundists in Holy Russia.