“To weep, to weep!” thought Uzelkov.

But the moment for tears had been missed; though the old man blinked his eyes, though he worked up his feelings, the tears did not flow nor the lump come in his throat.  After standing for ten minutes, with a gesture of despair, Uzelkov went to look for Shapkin.

DARKNESS

A young peasant, with white eyebrows and eyelashes and broad cheekbones, in a torn sheepskin and big black felt overboots, waited till the Zemstvo doctor had finished seeing his patients and came out to go home from the hospital; then he went up to him, diffidently.

“Please, your honour,” he said.

“What do you want?”

The young man passed the palm of his hand up and over his nose, looked at the sky, and then answered: 

“Please, your honour. . . .  You’ve got my brother Vaska the blacksmith from Varvarino in the convict ward here, your honour. . . .”

“Yes, what then?”

“I am Vaska’s brother, you see. . . .  Father has the two of us:  him, Vaska, and me, Kirila; besides us there are three sisters, and Vaska’s a married man with a little one. . . .  There are a lot of us and no one to work. . . .  In the smithy it’s nearly two years now since the forge has been heated.  I am at the cotton factory, I can’t do smith’s work, and how can father work?  Let alone work, he can’t eat properly, he can’t lift the spoon to his mouth.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Be merciful!  Let Vaska go!”

The doctor looked wonderingly at Kirila, and without saying a word walked on.  The young peasant ran on in front and flung himself in a heap at his feet.

“Doctor, kind gentleman!” he besought him, blinking and again passing his open hand over his nose.  “Show heavenly mercy; let Vaska go home!  We shall remember you in our prayers for ever!  Your honour, let him go!  They are all starving!  Mother’s wailing day in, day out, Vaska’s wife’s wailing . . . it’s worse than death!  I don’t care to look upon the light of day.  Be merciful; let him go, kind gentleman!”

“Are you stupid or out of your senses?” asked the doctor angrily.  “How can I let him go?  Why, he is a convict.”

Kirila began crying.  “Let him go!”

“Tfoo, queer fellow!  What right have I?  Am I a gaoler or what?  They brought him to the hospital for me to treat him, but I have as much right to let him out as I have to put you in prison, silly fellow!

“But they have shut him up for nothing!  He was in prison a year before the trial, and now there is no saying what he is there for.  It would have been a different thing if he had murdered someone, let us say, or stolen horses; but as it is, what is it all about?”

“Very likely, but how do I come in?”