A man was approaching, coming from the Perm side, singing in a loud, trembling voice. I raised my head and listened. I saw a little pilgrim, in a white cassock, with a tea-kettle at his belt and a calf-skin knapsack and a sauce-pan on his back. He walked briskly and nodded and smiled to me from afar. He was the usual pilgrim. There are many such, and all of them are harmful. Making pilgrimages is a paying business for them. They are boorish and ignorant and are inveterate liars and drunkards, and are not beyond stealing. I disliked them from the bottom of my heart. He came up to me, took off his cap, shook his head, and his hair danced drolly, while he chattered like a magpie. "Peace to you, young man. What heat! It is twenty-two degrees hotter than hell." "Are you long from there?" I asked. "About six hundred years." His voice was vibrant and gay, his head small, his forehead high, and his face was covered with fine wrinkles, like a spider-web. His gray beard looked clean and his brown eyes shone with gold, like a young man's. "He is a merry dog," I thought to myself. But he continued chattering. "The Urals; there is where you find beauty! The Lord is a great master in decorating the earth. He knows how to arrange the woods and the trees and the mountains well." He took his tramping gear off, moving quickly and briskly. He saw that my kettle was boiling over and he lifted it off the fire, and asked like an old comrade: "Shall I pour out my tea, or will we drink yours?" Before I had time to answer, he added: "Well, let's drink mine. I've got good tea. A merchant gave it to me. It's expensive." I smiled. "You're spry," I said to him. "That's nothing," he answered. "I am nearly dead from the heat. But wait till I'm rested. Then I will crease out your wrinkles for you." There was something about him which reminded me of Savelko, and I wanted to joke with him. But in about five minutes I listened to his words open-mouthed. They were strangely familiar; yet unheard-of, and it seemed to me that my own heart, not he, was singing the joy of the sunny days: "Look! Is this not a holiday? Is it not paradise? The mountains rise toward the sun, rejoicing, and the woods climb to the summits of the hills, and the little blades of grass under your feet strive winged up toward the light of life. All sing psalms of joy, but you, man, you, master of the earth, why do you sit here, morose?" "What strange bird is that?" I asked myself. But I said to him, trying to draw him out: "But what if I am filled with unhappy thoughts?" He pointed to the earth. "What is that?" "The earth." "No. Look higher." "You mean the grass?" "Higher still." "The shadow?" "It is the shadow of your body," he said, "and your thoughts are the shadow of our soul. What are you afraid of?" "I am afraid of nothing."