For the first time in his life was he weeping so. His was a bitter nature, and as often as life had brought him tears he had been able always to swallow them. He knew that his tears would soften nobody,--that they would only make him ridiculous. They would mock him as a soft-hearted fool, and that must never be. With teeth clenched together this wretched orphan had gone through life in eternal hostility to all about him. His eyes had been often suffused with blood, but never with tears. Now, however, he neither could nor desired to hold them back. He wept until the tears refused to come. Then he was overcome by a fainting sensation, and he thought that death was near. It would come to him just as he lay there. He stretched himself out, closed his eyes and waited for death. To lie thus, to fall asleep forever and cease to be. To be liberated once for all from the desolate days behind him and from the misery ahead. He yearned for death. “Ah, to die!” Before his sight there began to float dead bodies that he had seen during his life. Such he desired now to become. Then he beheld before him the hanging form of water-carrier Kirillo. All at once he sat up. A certain thought had raised him: he, too, would hang himself. This waiting for death would not do. He would not die so soon, if he waited. He peered into the thick darkness and thought. The impression of his whole life rose before him. Not a single day of happiness; not a moment of rest. Years of unceasing care and of constant struggle, of laborious toil and frequent hunger. And the future threatened still worse. As black as the dense gloom about him. Long years of incarceration, in the prisoners’ ranks, and then--hunger once more.