"You don't like it? . . . That's for the thimble!"

When he raised his hand with a flourish my heart seemed to rise too, and when he let his hand fall something within me seemed to sink.

"I won't do it again," squealed Sascha, in a dreadfully thin, weak voice, unpleasant to hear. "Did n't I tell--didn't I tell about the tablecloth?"

Grandfather answered calmly, as if he were reading the "Psalter":

"Tale-bearing is no justification. The informer gets whipped first, so take that for the tablecloth."

Grandmother threw herself upon me and seized my hand, crying: "I won't allow Lexei to be touched! I won't allow it, you monster!" And she began to kick the door, calling: "Varia! Varvara!"

Grandfather darted across to her, threw her down, seized me and carried me to the bench. I struck at him with my fists, pulled his sandy beard, and bit his fingers. He bellowed and held me as in a vice. In the end, throwing me down on the bench, he struck me on the face.

I shall never forget his savage cry: "Tie him up! I 'm going to kill him!" nor my mother's white face and great eyes as she ran along up and down beside the bench, shrieking:

"Father! You mustn't! Let me have him!"

Grandfather flogged me till I lost consciousness, and I was unwell for some days, tossing about, face downwards, on a wide, stuffy bed, in a little room with one window and a lamp which was always kept burning before the case of icons in the corner. Those dark days had been the greatest in my life. In the course of them I had developed wonderfully, and I was conscious of a peculiar difference in myself. I began to experience a new solicitude for others, and I became so ,s keenly alive to their sufferings and my own that it was almost as if my heart had been lacerated, and thus rendered sensitive.

For this reason the quarrel between my mother and grandmother came as a great shock to me--when grandmother, looking so dark and big in the narrow room, flew into a rage, and pushing my mother into the corner where the icons were, hissed:

"Why did n't you take him away?"

"I was afraid."

"A strong, healthy creature like you! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Varvara! I am an old woman and I am not afraid. For shame!"

"Do leave off, Mother; I am sick of the whole business."

"No, you don't love him! You have no pity for the poor orphan!"

"I have been an orphan all my life," said my mother, speaking loudly and sadly.

After that they both cried for a long time, seated on a box in a corner, and then my mother said:

"If it were not for Alexei, I would leave this place --and go right away. I can't go on living in this hell, Mother, I can't! I haven't the strength."

"Oh! My own flesh and blood!" whispered grandmother.

I kept all this in my mind. Mother was weak, and, like the others, she was afraid of grandfather, and I was preventing her from leaving the house in which she found it impossible to live. It was very unfortunate. Before long my mother really did disappear from the house, going somewhere on a visit.

Very soon after this, as suddenly as if he had fallen from the ceiling, grandfather appeared, and sitting on the bed, laid his ice-cold hands on my head.

"How do you do, young gentleman? Come! answer me. Don't sulk! Well? What have you to say?"

I had a great mind to kick away his legs, but it hurt me to move. His head, sandier than ever, shook from side to side uneasily; his bright eyes seemed to be looking for something on the wall as he pulled out of his pocket a gingerbread goat, a horn made of sugar, an apple and a cluster of purple raisins, which he placed on the pillow under my very nose.

"There you are! There 's a present for you."

And he stooped and kissed me on the forehead. Then, stroking my head with those small, cruel hands, yellow-stained about the crooked, claw-like nails, he began to speak.

"I left my mark on you then, my friend. You were very angry. You bit me and scratched me, and then I lost my temper too. However, it will do you no harm to have been punished more severely than you deserved. It will go towards next time. You must learn not to mind when people of your own family beat you. It is part of your training. It would be different if it came from an outsider, but from one of us it does not count. You must not allow outsiders to lay hands on you, but it is nothing coming from one of your own family. I suppose you think I was never flogged? Oleysha! I was flogged harder than you could ever imagine even in a bad dream. I was flogged so cruelly that God Himself might have shed tears to see it.