“Well, blasted book-worm,” Kuvalda would say to him, “what do you understand of it all?”

“And what about you?”

“I don’t understand anything, but then I do not read books.…”

“Well, I read them.”

“Therefore you are a fool…” said the Captain decidedly. “When insects get in your head, it is bad enough, but what if thoughts would crawl into it too, what would you do, you old toad?”

“I have not long to live,” said Tyapa, quietly.

Once the teacher asked how he had learned to read.

“In prison,” answered Tyapa, shortly.

“Oh, you’ve been there, have you?”

“Yes, I have.”

“What for?”

“Just a mistake of mine…but I got the Bible there. A lady gave it to me.…It is good to be in prison, brother”

“Is that so? And why?”

“It teaches one.…I learned to read there.…I also got this book.…And all this for nothing.”

When the teacher appeared in the doss-house, Tyapa had already lived there for some time. He started watching him intently. In order to look into a man’s face, Tyapa had to bend all his body sideways. He listened greedily to his conversation, and once, sitting down beside him, he said:

“I see you are very learned.…Have you read the Bible?”

“I have.…”

“I see; I see.…Can you remember it?”

“Yes.…I do.…”

Then the old man leaned to one side and gazed at the other with a stern, suspicious glance in his gray eyes.

“There were the Amalekites, do you remember?”

“Well?”

“Where are they now?”

“Disappeared…Tyapa…died out…”

The old man was silent, then asked again: “And where are the Philistines?”

“They, too…”

“Have they all died out?”