"How can I teach religion," she asked, "if these little pagans defy me? I've punished, and punished, but they won't bow to the holy icon, and it's the Mother of God herself. And all the Batoushka says is, 'Be gentle.'" Okhrim's eyes sparkled, and his hard mouth twitched. The lust of persecution had taken possession of him, and he must gratify it, even by persecuting children. "So our Batoushka says, 'Be gentle!'" he snarled. "I'll be gentle with him! He's unorthodox himself—teaching the folks all sorts o' nonsense, and telling the men it's a sin to drink much vodka. We don't want doctrine like that here." The village inn belonged to Okhrim, and since Father Cyril's influence had been felt the receipts had fallen off seriously. The church was filled, but the inn was comparatively empty. Okhrim hated the priest as fully as he hated the Stundists. At the first favourable opportunity, he drove over to Kovylsk, and going to the consistory, humbly asked for an interview with Father Paissy, through whose efforts Stundism had been rooted out of Knishi. Shortly afterwards Father Cyril received a mandate to appear before his archbishop, who had always shown himself very friendly to him. But it was not the archbishop who received him, it was his old fellow-student, Father Paissy, who owed him many a grudge, and who treated him with scant courtesy. "Father Cyril," he said sharply, "we thought we had destroyed, root and branch, the damnable heresy in your parish. But I am informed it is not so. I hear you are bringing up a Stundist girl as your own daughter in the church-house itself." "She is a delicate child," answered Father Cyril, "scarcely eleven years of age; quite unfit for a rough life among the common peasants." "Yet you must place her elsewhere," said Father Paissy; "we cannot permit a parish priest to make his house a refuge for heretics." "Let me beg of you to leave her with me for a few years!" exclaimed Father Cyril. "Who knows whether love and kindness may not bring her back to the Church? She is a mere child, Father Paissy, most docile and tractable. In time—yes, in time, she may come back to us." "Was her father Alexis Ivanoff, that dangerous agitator?" asked Father Paissy. "Yes," he answered reluctantly, "but he was banished to Siberia in the early spring; and Michael, his only other child, went with him. She has not a soul related to her in the village. All the other children have relatives who can take some care of them. There has not been time yet for her to forget. But time does wonders. Let the child remain under my care and my instruction, and by and by she will comprehend the truths of our holy Orthodox Church. She will learn none of them by living with a peasant." "Oh, I don't care to make the girl a theologian," said Father Paissy, with a sneer; "it will be sufficient for her to conform because she must. The people ought to obey the Church, without asking why."