"You are right, daddy! You say truly. To think of the soul is the great thing. The soul's the chief thing...." He paused. "Thank you, daddy, it is quite true"; and he pointed to his pipe. "What is it?... Good-for-nothing rubbish! The soul's the chief thing!" repeated he. "What you say is true," and his face grew still kindlier and more serious. I wished to continue the conversation, but a lump rose in my throat (I have grown very weak in the matter of tears), and I could not speak. With a joyful, tender feeling I took leave of him, swallowing my tears, and I went away. Yes, how can one help being joyful, living amid such people? How can one help expecting from such people all that is most excellent? FROM THE DIARY I am again staying with my friend, Tchertkóff, in the Moscow Government, and am visiting him now for the same reason that once caused us to meet on the border of the Orlóf Government, and that brought me to the Moscow Government a year ago. The reason is that Tchertkóff is allowed to live anywhere in the whole world, except in Toúla Government. So I travel to different ends of it to see him. Before eight o'clock I go out for my usual walk. It is a hot day. At first I go along the hard clay road, past the acacia bushes already preparing to crack their pods and shed their seeds; then past the yellowing rye-field, with its still fresh and lovely cornflowers, and come out into a black fallow field, now almost all ploughed up. To the right an old man, in rough peasant-boots, ploughs with a _sohá_[4] and a poor, skinny horse; and I hear an angry old voice shout: "Gee-up!" and, from time to time, "Now, you devil!" and again, "Gee-up, devil!" I want to speak with him; but when I pass his furrow, he is at the other end of the field. I go on. There is another ploughman further on. This one I shall probably meet when he reaches the road. If so, I'll speak to him, if there is a chance. And we do meet just as he reaches the road. [4] A primitive plough used by the peasants. He ploughs with a proper plough, harnessed to a big roan horse, and is a well-built young lad, well clad, and wearing good boots; and he answers my greeting of "God aid you!" pleasantly. The plough does not cut into the hard, beaten track that crosses the field, and he lifts it over and halts. "You find the plough better than a _sohá_?" "Why, certainly ... much easier!" "Have you had it long?" "Not long--and it nearly got stolen...." "But you got it back?" "Yes! One of our own villagers had it." "Well, and did you have the law of him?" "Why, naturally!" "But why prosecute, if you got the plough back?" "Why, you see, he's a thief!" "What then? The man will go to prison, and learn to steal worse!" He looks at me seriously and attentively, evidently neither agreeing nor contradicting this, to him, new idea.