whole year in bargaining for precisely those which were beyond his means. He had reconciled himself to his present domicile merely in the firm expectation of a future cottage which should be strong, spacious, and warm. “I simply don’t intend to live on here!” he snapped one day. Yakoff stared at him attentively and shook his cap. “Exactly so. That means you are expecting your ships to come in?” “They’ll come, all right,” replied Syery mysteriously. “Oï, drop your nonsense,” said Yakoff. “Get yourself a place somewhere--anywhere you can--and keep your teeth, for example, in their proper place.” But the thought of a fine farmstead, good order, some suitable, real work, poisoned Syery’s entire life. He got bored when working in a place. “Evidently, working at home isn’t as sweet as honey, either,” said his neighbours. “Never you mind, it might be honey-sweet if the house were managed sensibly!” “Just so. And will you take a place by the month, or until the working season?” “I’ll get one, never fear. Oversight is needed at home, isn’t it?” “But all you do is to sit in the house and smoke your pipe.” “What am I to do, then? can’t I even smoke?” And Syery, suddenly becoming animated, jerked the cold pipe out of his mouth and began his favourite story: how, while still a bachelor, he had lived two full years honestly and nobly at the house of a priest near Eletz. “Yes, and if I were to go there this minute, they would fairly tear me to pieces with joy!” he exclaimed. “I need say only one word: ‘I’ve come, papa, to work for you--will you take me or not?’ ‘But why do you ask that, light of my life? Don’t I know you? Yes, good Lord, live here with us for ever and ever, if you will’!” “Well, and you might go there, for example--” “I might go there! Look at them--all those brats in the corner! We know all about that; ’tis another man’s grief, I’ll not meddle. But a man is being wasted here, in vain.” V Syery was being wasted, in vain, this year also. He had sat at home all winter long, with care-worn countenance, without light, cold and hungry. During the Great Fast (Lent), he had managed somehow or other to get a place with Rusanoff, near Tula: no one in his own neighbourhood would any longer give him a place. But before the month was out, Rusanoff’s establishment had become more repulsive to him than a bitter radish. “Oï, young fellow!” the manager once remarked to him. “I can see right through you: you are picking a quarrel so that you can take to your heels. Here, you dog, here’s your money in advance, and now be off with you into the bushes!” “Perhaps some sort of vagabond might take himself off, but not me,” retorted Syery sharply. But the manager did not understand the hint. And it became necessary to adopt more decisive means. One day Syery was set to hauling in some husks for the cattle. He went to the threshing-floor and began to load a cart with straw. The manager came along: