more so for one who is used to tramping around the world—going here and there and everywhere, as was my case. I used to make up stories for her—I know hundreds of fairy-tales. Well, you know, a tale is a thing of fancy. And it warms up the blood. And Tasha…” He shut his eyes and sighed, shaking his head.

“An extraordinary beauty she was! And I was extraordinary with women, mad about them, I was.”

The old man became excited and went on with pride and rapture, choking over his words:

“See, friend: I’m now a man of sixty-seven and still I can get all the pleasure I want out of any woman, that’s the truth! About five years after all this happened how many a wench would beg me: ‘Savel, dear, do let me go, I’m quite played out.’ I’d take pity on her and do so and she would come back again in a few days. ‘Well, so here you are again, are you?’ I would say. A female, my friend, is a great thing, the whole world raves about her—the beast and the bird and the tiny moth—all just live for her alone. What else is there to live for?”

“What, anyway, did your daughter say at the trial?”

“Tasha? She made up a story—or perhaps it was the Antzyferova woman who suggested it to her (I’d once done her a service of sorts)—that she had brought the injury upon herself and that I was not to blame. Well, I was let off. It’s all a put-up job with them, a thing of no account, just to show what a watch they keep on the laws. It’s all a fraud, all these laws, orders and papers; it’s all unnecessary. Let everyone live as he pleases, that would be cheaper and pleasanter. Here am I, living and not getting into anyone’s way and not pushing forward.”

“And what about murderers?”

“They should be killed,” Savel decided. “The man who kills should be done away with on the spot with no nonsense about it! A man is not a mosquito or a fly, he is no worse than you, you scum.…”

“And—thieves?”

“That’s an odd idea! Why should there be any thieves, if there is nothing to steal? Now, what would you take from me? I haven’t any too much, so there is no envy, no greed. Why should there be any thieves? There are thieves where there is a surplus of things; when he sees plenty he just grabs a bit.…”

It was dark by now, night had poured into the ravine. An owl hooted three times. The old man hearkened to its eerie cries and said with a smile:

“It lives close by in a hollow tree. Sometimes it gets caught by the sun, can’t hide in time, and just stays out in the light. I pass by and stick out my tongue at it. It can’t see a thing, just sits quite still. Lucky if the smaller birds don’t catch sight of it.”

I asked how he had come to be a hermit.

“Just like that: wandered and wandered around and then stopped short. All because of Tasha. The Antzyferova woman played me a trick there—did not let me see Tasha after the trial. ‘I know the whole truth,’ she said, ‘and you should be grateful to me for escaping hard labor, but I won’t give you back your daughter.’ A fool she was, of course. I hovered around for a time, but no, there was nothing doing! So off I went—to Kiev and Siberia, earned a lot of money there and came home. The Antzyferova woman had been run over and killed by a train, and as for Tasha, she had been married off to a surgeon’s assistant in Kursk. To Kursk I went, but the surgeon’s assistant had left for Persia, for Uzun. I pushed on to Tzaritzyn, from there by ship to Uzun—but Tasha had died. I saw the man—a red-haired, red-nosed cheerful lad. A drunkard, he turned out to be. ‘Are you her father, maybe?’ he asked.—‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing like that, but I’d seen her father in Siberia.’ I did not wish to confide in a stranger. Well, so then I went to New Mt.