Grandfather Jeremy waved his hand to signify how far.

“Four thousand versts at least, and he hasn’t come straight by a long way.  Most of the way he walked, and sometimes he got a lift, sometimes a big lift that took him on a long way.”

“Ah, ah!” said a youngster sympathetically, “and all in vain, all in vain—­naprasno, naprasno—­”

Jeremy paid no attention.

“Big lifts,” his voice quavered.  “And now he is there.  Yes, now he is there.”

“Where, grandfather?”

“There, where he wished to be, in the Holy City.  He had got very tired, and God had mercy on him.  God gave him his last lift.  He is there now, long before us.”

“I don’t see how you make that out,” said a young man, a visitor, not a pilgrim.  “God, I reckon, cheated him.”

“God never cheats,” said Jeremy calmly.

“God...” said the visitor, and was about to raise a discussion and try to convert these pilgrims from their superstition.  But Jeremy interrupted him.  For the old man, though a peasant, had a singular dignity.

“Hush!  Pronounce not His name lightly.  I will tell you a story.”

“Silence now!” cried several.  “Hear grandfather’s story!”

The old man then told the story of an aged pilgrim who had died on his way to Jerusalem.  I thought he was repeating the story of the life of Mikhail, so like were his present words to those that had gone before.  But the issue was different.  In this case the pilgrim died and was buried in a little village near Odessa.

He was a penniless beggar.  In grandfather’s picturesque language, “he had no money; instead of which he bore the reproach of Christ.  He found other men’s charity....

“All his life he wandered towards Bethlehem.  He used to say he pilgrimaged not towards Calvary, but towards Bethlehem.  The thought that the Roman officials had treated Christ as a thief was too much for him to bear.

“He who possessed all things they treated as one who had stolen a little thing....”

The old man paused at this digression, and stared around him with an expression of terror and stupefaction.

There was a silence.

“Go on, Jeremy,” said some one impatiently.

Jeremy proceeded.

“He always journeyed towards Bethlehem, and whenever he saw a little child, a little baby, he would say to the mother that it foretold him what it would be like for him at the Holy Land.  And of the cradles he would always say they were just the shape of the manger where the baby Christ was laid.

“He was very dear to mothers, you may be sure, and he never lacked their blessing.

“He travelled very slowly, for in Moscow a motor-car ran over his foot, and he always needed a strong staff.  He was ill-treated sometimes in the towns, where the dogs bit him and the street children aimed stones.  But he never took offence.  He smiled, and thought how little his sufferings had been compared with those of the saints.