The old man scratched his forehead, glanced upwards at Yegorushka with his red eyes, and went on: 

“Maxim Nikolaitch, the gentleman from Slavyanoserbsk, brought a little lad to school, too, last year.  I don’t know how he is getting on there in studying the sciences, but he was a nice good little lad. . . .  God give them help, they are nice gentlemen.  Yes, he, too, brought his boy to school. . . .  In Slavyanoserbsk there is no establishment, I suppose, for study.  No. . . .  But it is a nice town. . . .  There’s an ordinary school for simple folks, but for the higher studies there is nothing.  No, that’s true.  What’s your name? . . .”

“Yegorushka.”

“Yegory, then. . . .  The holy martyr Yegory, the Bearer of Victory, whose day is the twenty-third of April.  And my christian name is Panteley, . . .  Panteley Zaharov Holodov. . . .  We are Holodovs . . . .  I am a native of—­maybe you’ve heard of it—­Tim in the province of Kursk.  My brothers are artisans and work at trades in the town, but I am a peasant. . . .  I have remained a peasant.  Seven years ago I went there—­home, I mean.  I went to the village and to the town. . . .  To Tim, I mean.  Then, thank God, they were all alive and well; . . . but now I don’t know. . . .  Maybe some of them are dead. . . .  And it’s time they did die, for some of them are older than I am.  Death is all right; it is good so long, of course, as one does not die without repentance.  There is no worse evil than an impenitent death; an impenitent death is a joy to the devil.  And if you want to die penitent, so that you may not be forbidden to enter the mansions of the Lord, pray to the holy martyr Varvara.  She is the intercessor.  She is, that’s the truth. . . .  For God has given her such a place in the heavens that everyone has the right to pray to her for penitence.”

Panteley went on muttering, and apparently did not trouble whether Yegorushka heard him or not.  He talked listlessly, mumbling to himself, without raising or dropping his voice, but succeeded in telling him a great deal in a short time.  All he said was made up of fragments that had very little connection with one another, and quite uninteresting for Yegorushka.  Possibly he talked only in order to reckon over his thoughts aloud after the night spent in silence, in order to see if they were all there.  After talking of repentance, he spoke about a certain Maxim Nikolaitch from Slavyanoserbsk.

“Yes, he took his little lad; . . . he took him, that’s true . . .”

One of the waggoners walking in front darted from his place, ran to one side and began lashing on the ground with his whip.  He was a stalwart, broad-shouldered man of thirty, with curly flaxen hair and a look of great health and vigour.  Judging from the movements of his shoulders and the whip, and the eagerness expressed in his attitude, he was beating something alive.  Another waggoner, a short stubby little man with a bushy black beard, wearing a waistcoat and a shirt outside his trousers, ran up to him.  The latter broke into a deep guffaw of laughter and coughing and said:  “I say, lads, Dymov has killed a snake!”