The following days were taken up with preparations for the funeral and with the removal of Rayisa to Dorimedont's quarters. Yevsey flung himself about like a little bird in a cloud of dark fear. Only occasionally did the timid thought flicker in his mind like a will o' the wisp, "What will become of me?" It saddened his heart, and awoke the desire to run away and hide himself. But everywhere he met the eagle eyes of Dorimedont, and heard his dull voice: "Boy, quick!" The command resounded within Yevsey, and pushed him from side to side. He ran about for whole days at a time. In the evening he fell asleep empty and exhausted, and his sleep was heavy and black and full of terrible dreams. CHAPTER VIII From this life Yevsey awoke in a dusky corner of a large room with a low ceiling. He sat holding a pen in his hand at a table covered with dirty green oilcloth, and before him lay a thick book in which there was writing, and a few pages of blank ruled paper. He did not understand what he had to do with all this apparatus, and looked around helplessly. There were many tables in the room with two or four persons at each. They sat there with a tired and vexed expression on their faces, moving their pens rapidly, smoking much, and now and then casting curt words at one another. The pungent blue smoke floated to the window casements, where it met the deafening noise that entered importunately from the street. Numberless flies buzzed about the occupants' heads, crawled over the tables and notices on the walls, and knocked against the panes. They resembled the people who filled this stifling filthy cage with their bustle. Gendarmes stood at the doors, officers came and went, various persons entered, exchanged greetings, smiled obsequiously, and sighed. Their rapid, plaintive talk, which kept up a constant see-saw, was broken and drowned by the stern calls of the clerks. Yevsey sat in his corner with his neck stretched over the table and his transparent eyes wide open, scrutinizing the different clerks in an attempt to remember their faces and figures. He wanted to find someone among them who would help him. The instinct of self-protection, now awakened in him, concentrated all his oppressed feelings, all his broken thoughts, into one clear endeavor to adapt himself to this place and these people, as soon as possible, in order to make himself unnoticed among them.