One day when the child was sitting on the old miner's knees, they heard far off in the direction where Ivan's mother was working a dull shock--a noise like a sigh escaping from the breast of Mother Earth herself. The shock re-echoed in all the mine-shafts and smallest recesses of all the galleries. The earth fell in in several places. "Save us, Lord!" cried the old man, rising quickly. "Pray to God, little one. A child's prayer avails much with Him." Little Ivan knelt down, and prayed without knowing why or for what. All his prayer consisted in repeating, "Kind Jesus!... Good Jesus!... Dear old Jesus!" Since for him goodness was personified in the old miner, and as on the other hand Jesus was the very incarnation of goodness, it followed that Jesus must be old, very old. It was thus that the child imagined Him, and under this aspect that he sometimes saw Him standing in the darkness of the mine. The subterranean shocks re-echoed to a great distance and did not cease till they passed beyond the boundaries of the mine. Then only a vague vibration remained in the air like the presentiment of a great calamity. The old miner turned in the direction where Ivan's mother had been working. He walked with uncertain steps and then returned hesitatingly towards the child. When they reached the gallery they found it narrower and contracted above where the earth had sunk. Presently they came to a point where it shrank to a narrow hole. The old man and the child crawled through it with difficulty. Soon, fortunately, they could stand upright. A few steps more and the old man abruptly fell on his knees. The place where Ivan's mother had been working no longer existed. The child and the old man were confronted by a huge mass of damp earth. Its dampness was constantly increasing, for it was traversed by a thread of water from a spring which had suddenly been liberated, one knew not how, from its long imprisonment. From underneath this damp mass projected the feet of Ivan's mother. The child rushed forward, seized the coarse boots which she wore and tugged at them, but in vain; the earth which lay on his mother guarded its prey well. "Maria! Maria!" cried the old miner in a despairing voice. There was no reply. The feet in their coarse boots, feebly lighted by the little lamp, remained motionless.