“But it would be far better for you, young man, to go away from here,” the teacher advised him, watching with his sad eyes. The latter gave no answer, but remained. They soon became accustomed to his presence, and ceased to take any notice of him. But he went on living among them, noticing everything.

All the above-mentioned men were the chief members of the Captain’s general staff, and he called them with kind-hearted sarcasm “Creatures that once were men.” Beside them there always were about five or six rank and file tramps in the doss-house. They could not boast of the same past as the “creatures,” but were more complete human beings, less dislocated ones, although they, too, had experienced many hard kicks from fate. They were almost all of them former peasants. A respectable man of a cultured class may be superior to his equivalent among peasants, but an urban man of dissolute, low life is always worse than his rural counterpart.

The most vivid representative of the latter class was an old mujik called Tyapa. Tall and hideously angular, he held his head so that his chin touched his breast, and this gave his silhouette the shape of a poker. His face could be distinguished only in profile; one then saw his crooked nose, hanging lower lip and gray shaggy eyebrows.

He was the Captain’s first lodger, and it was rumored that he had a great deal of money hidden in a secret place. About two years ago someone tried to cut his throat on account of this money: his head had been bent since that day. He denied that he had the money, and said that they only tried to cut his throat out of malice, and that it had only made his job of collecting rags—which meant bending to the ground—an easy one for him. When he went about with his unsteady gait and without a stick in his hand, or a bag behind his back—he seemed just a man buried in meditation, and, at such times, Kuvalda would say, pointing at him with his finger:

“Look, there goes the runaway conscience of Merchant Judas Petunikoff. See how disorderly, dirty, and low it is.”

Tyapa spoke in a hoarse voice, his speech was indistinct, and probably for that reason he spoke very seldom, and loved to be alone. But whenever a fresh example of mankind, compelled through need to leave the village, appeared in the doss-house, Tyapa grew restless and angry and followed the unfortunate man about with biting jeers emerging from his throat with an angry chuckle. He either set some other fresh beggar against him, or himself threatened to rob and beat him up till finally the frightened man would disappear from the doss-house. Then Tyapa would be quiet again, and would sit in a corner mending his rags, or reading his Bible, which was as dirty, worn, and old as himself. Only when the teacher brought a newspaper and began reading did he come from his corner once more. He listened to what was read silently and sighed deeply, without asking any questions. But when the teacher, having read the paper, wanted to put it away, Tyapa would stretch out his bony hand, and say, “Give it to me.…”

“What do you want it for?”

“Give it to me.…Perhaps there is something in it about us.…”

“About whom?”

“About the village.”

They laughed at him and threw him the paper. He would take it and read in it how the hail had destroyed the cornfields in one village, how in another one fire had brought down thirty houses, and in a third a woman had poisoned her husband—in fact, everything that it is customary to say about the countryside which depicts it as wicked, miserable and ignorant. Tyapa read all this silently and grunted, perhaps expressing sympathy with that sound, perhaps delight.

He spent Sunday reading his Bible, and never went out collecting rags on that day. He propped the book against his breast, and was angry when anyone interrupted him or touched his Bible.