On Saturday Ilya stood with the old man on the church steps between the two doors, with the beggars. Whenever the outer door was opened, Ilya felt the cold air blowing in from the street, his feet were numbed, and he moved gently with short steps up and down on the pavement. But he saw through the glass panes of the church door how the candle flames made beautiful patterns of quivering points of gold, and lit up the glimmering metal on the priest's garments, the dark heads of the reverent multitude, the faces in the sacred pictures and the splendid carving of the holy shrines. People seemed better and kinder in the church than in the street. They looked more beautiful too in the golden candlelight that illuminated their dark forms, standing in reverent silence. Whenever the inner door opened there streamed out on the steps the solemn, deep-toned waves of song, warm, heavy with incense; gently they wrapped the lad round, and he breathed in the sweet-scented air, with delight. It was good to him to stand there beside old Jeremy, as he murmured prayers. He heard the glorious, solemn song that flooded the house of God, and waited impatiently for the door to open again and let the loud, joyful sound sweep over him, and the warm balsam-laden air cling round his being. He knew that up there in the church choir Grishka Bubnov was singing, one of the worst of his tormentors in the school, and Fedka Dolganov, too, a strong, quarrelsome lout, who had thrashed him more than once. But now he felt no hate towards them nor desire for revenge, only a little envy. He would have liked to sing in the choir and see the faces of the people. It must be so beautiful to sing there at the middle door by the altar, high above the people, and see their quiet, peaceful faces. When he left the church, he felt as though he had grown better and was ready to be reconciled to Bubnov and Dolganov and all his schoolfellows. But on the following Monday, he came home from school sombre and affronted even as before. Everywhere, where men are gathered together in any numbers, there will be one who is ill at ease among them, and it is not at all necessary that he should be either worse or better than the rest. The ill-will of a crowd can be aroused by a lack of intelligence or by a ridiculous nose. It simply chooses some one as the object of its sport, inspired by nothing but the wish to amuse itself. In this case the lot had fallen on Ilya Lunev. No doubt in the course of time, he would have ceased to fill the _rôle_ that his comrades had allotted to him, but now there came into Ilya's life, events that shook his soul profoundly with their terrible impressions, and so far lessened his interest in the school, that he became indifferent to its small unpleasantnesses. The beginning came one day when Ilya, returning with Jakov from an excursion, noticed a crowd in the gateway of the house. "Look!" said Jakov to his friend, "they're fighting again. Come along, let's get in quick!"