They drove off. The dusty road trailed behind the rapid wheels, and revealed vistas of depressing commonplaceness. The light dust, stirred by the wheels into the sultry air, trailed behind the carriage like a long serpent. The high flaming Dragon looked down from his inaccessible sky with furious eyes upon the impoverished earth. There was a thirst for blood in the hot glister of his rays, and there was a soaring exultation because men had shed some priceless drops of the wine of life. In the midst of these open, heat-swept spaces, Trirodov, drawn at this moment into the crowded town life, was addressing his companion in dull, everyday words: “They searched many houses early this morning. They found a great deal of literature at Stchemilov’s. He’s been arrested.” He also repeated the rumour of whippings at the police-station. Elisaveta was silent. Voronok’s house was situated in a very convenient place, somewhere between the centre of the town and the factory section. This house had many visitors because Voronok was an assiduous worker in the local Social Democratic Party. His chief function was to carry on propaganda among the working men and the young, and incidentally to instil into them party views and a true understanding of the aims of the working classes. Young boys used to come to Voronok, his pupils from the town school, and these brought their comrades and acquaintances with them--those whom they met at home or by chance. They were for the most part charming, sincere, and intelligent youngsters, but very dishevelled and very self-conscious. Voronok taught them very heartily and with good results. They assimilated his teachings: a sympathy towards the working proletariat, a hate towards the satiated bourgeois, a consciousness of the irreconcilability of the interests of the two classes, and a few random facts from history. The ragamuffins from the town school invariably opened every visit to Voronok by complaining against the school rules and the inspector. They complained chiefly about trifles. They would say with an injured air: “They compel us to wear official badges upon our caps.” “They treat us as if we were little children.” “They brand us, so that every one may know that we are the boys of the town school.” “They force us to cut our hair; why should our hair worry them?” Voronok sympathized with them fully. This helped him to keep them in a state of revolt. Their no less unkempt friends, who did not go to school, also found something to complain about--if not against their parents, then against the police, indeed against anything that occurred to them. But their complaints did not contain quite that poison and steadiness which was instilled into the schoolboys with all the force of a school. Voronok used to give both classes pamphlets that cost a kopeck and were intensely strict in their party purity.