When Ivan grew up and became a miner in his turn his surroundings changed their aspect in his eyes and became inanimate. The springs and the metals, these bondslaves of the earth, no longer possessed a soul for him. The dark rocks, when his pickaxe laid their sides open, were as inanimate as the damp masses of ore. Jesus also, Whom he saw so clearly in his childhood, had disappeared from the time that they had abandoned the old mine for another one. But the impressions made on him in childhood remained hidden and shut up in the profoundest depth of Ivan's heart, resembling in this the hidden springs in the heart of the rock. Later on, under the inexorable pressure of time when Ivan had become old, these impressions rose again to the surface, and he found himself once more surrounded by vague apparitions and mysterious murmurs. Only Jesus remained absent, though the fixed gaze of the old Ivan searched for Him perseveringly in the darkness of the subterranean kingdom. II "Well, old man, get in!" said the miners. The moving windlass brought to the mouth of the shaft the bucket in which the ore was brought up. The rusty iron chain unrolled slowly with a harsh grating sound. Below the darkness was so dense that one could not even perceive the reflection of water which is always visible at the bottom of the deepest wells. Ivan squatted down in the bucket. "Now, in the name of God! you will turn round a bit, old man." "It won't hurt him to swing a little," said others jokingly. "Look, you fellows, we will get him down in the twinkling of an eye." The windlass creaked, the rusty chain groaned plaintively, and the bucket began to descend by jerks, knocking against the wooden lining of the shaft with a metallic echo. Ivan raised his eyes; above him the pit-mouth looked like a greyish patch, round him was impenetrable darkness. The bucket turned with the chain and descended slowly. The little lamp fastened to his waist cast trembling gleams on the damp walls, and its light flickered timidly, hardly making visible the drops of water which trickled across the wooden lining of the shaft; in fact it seemed on the point of going out. Any one unused to such a descent would at once have become giddy, but to old Ivan it seemed a mere trifle. How often already he had thus descended and come up! The walls of the shaft became more and more damp. Above, the grey patch shrank and shrank. It seemed as though the day staring fixedly into the darkness of the pit gradually closed its grey eye, baffled at its depth.