After Father Cyril was gone, Velia's life was a blank despair. To children there is no hope in the future, for they can foresee nothing. The daily glimpse of Father Cyril in church, the fond and pitying glance he never failed to give to the eager, miserable little face always turned to him; the sight of the young Matoushka and her children—all these had been something to look forward to, day by day. They had been what Velia lived by, the scanty food on which her young heart fed. Now this food was taken away, she grew hungry, with a desperate hunger, for the sight of a beloved face. There was no face to be seen in her world save the harsh, forbidding visage of her mistress. It was the gossip of the village that the old Matoushka was about to marry Okhrim, the Starosta. This was not true, though Okhrim went often to visit the widow. Neither could ever arrive at a satisfactory knowledge of how much property the other possessed. Their conversation was always of money, or of the almost as interesting topic—the Stundist heresy. Both were supremely Orthodox. When Okhrim was there, Velia hardly dared to breathe. She crept into the darkest corners, and made herself as small as possible. Nothing amused Okhrim more than to force the trembling child to make a profound obeisance to the "Mother of God," a really handsome icon which occupied the place of honour in the hut. It proved how devout the priest's widow was. "She'll make a good Christian yet," he was wont to say, with a sneering smile which frightened Velia more than his worst oath. "She's a stubborn little toad!" responded the mistress viciously. By day Velia scarcely knew a moment's rest. The old Matoushka was a strong old woman, and she had never had a child of her own. She did not know, and she did not wish to know, the limits of a child's strength. As long as Velia could move, she must be kept to work. When she could work no longer it was time for her to go to bed, on a ragged mattress behind the oven. It was warm, but it swarmed with crickets and cockroaches. Velia worked till her young limbs ached, and her eyes grew dim with sleep, before she could resolve to seek rest. But every night nature compelled her to succumb, and creep exhausted to her dreaded bed. So the long dreary months of the winter wore slowly away—those bitter days and nights when her father and brother were marching across the icebound wastes of Siberia, often congratulating themselves that Velia was safe, and cherished as a daughter in Father Cyril's home. The girl cried after them incessantly in her heart, though her tyrant knew nothing of it. It is terrible, but children are sometimes too sad for tears or cries. CHAPTER XXX VELIA'S TYRANTS