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That damned priest wouldn't have given me any peace anyway, and he can go to hell now for all I care. As for that gingerhead," he said to himself as he opened the gate, "I'll punch his face for certain."

His mother, who was lighting the samovar in the yard, looked up at her son's approach and asked anxiously:

"Well, how was it?"

"Fine," Pavel replied.

His mother was about to say something when through the open window Pavel caught a glimpse of his brother Artem's broad back.

"Artem's come home?" he asked, worried.

"Yes, he came last night. He's going to stay here and work at the railway yards."

With some hesitation Pavel opened the front door.

The man seated at the table with his back to the door turned his huge frame as Pavel entered and the eyes under the thick black brows looked stern.

"Ah, here comes the tobacco lad. Well, how goes it?"

Pavel dreaded the forthcoming interview.

"Artem knows all about it already," he thought. "I'm in for a good row and hiding to boot." Pavel stood somewhat in awe of his elder brother.

But Artem evidently had no intention of beating him. He sat on a stool, leaning his elbows on the table, and studied Pavel's face with a mingled expression of amusement and scorn.

"So you've graduated from university, eh? Learned all there is to learn and now you're busying yourself with slops, eh?"

Pavel stared down at a nail sticking out of a floor board. Artem got up from the table and went into the kitchen.

"Looks as if I won't get a thrashing after all," Pavel thought with a sigh of relief.

Later on at tea Artem questioned Pavel about the incident at school. Pavel told him all that had happened.

"What will become of you if you grow up to be such a scamp," the mother said sadly. "What shall we do with him? Who does he take after, I wonder? Dear God, to think of all I've had to suffer from that boy," she complained.

Artem pushed his empty cup away and turned to Pavel.

"Now listen to me, mate," he said. "What's done can't be undone. Only now take care and do your work properly and no monkey business, because if you get yourself kicked out of this place I'll give you a proper thrashing. Remember that. You've given mother enough trouble as it is. You're always getting into some sort of mess. Now that's got to stop. When you've worked for a year or thereabouts I'll try and get you taken on at the railway yards as an apprentice, because you'll never amount to anything if you mess about with slops all your life. You've got to learn a trade. You're a bit too young just now, but in a year's time I'll see what I can do, maybe they'll take you. I'll be working here now. Ma won't need to go out to work any more. She's slaved enough for all sorts of swine. Only see here, Pavel, you've got to be a man."

He stood up, his huge frame dwarfing everything about him, and putting on the jacket that hung over the chair, said to his mother: "I've got to go out for an hour or so," and went out, stooping in the doorway.

Passing by the window on his way to the gate, he looked in and called out to Pavel: "I've brought you a pair of boots and a knife. Mother will give them to you."

The station restaurant was open day and night.

Six different railway lines met at this junction, and the station was always packed with people;only for two or three hours at night during a gap between trains was the place comparatively quiet.

Hundreds of trains passed through this station bringing maimed and crippled men from the front and taking back a constant stream of new men in monotonous grey overcoats.

Pavel worked there for two years—two years in which he saw nothing more than the scullery and kitchen. The twenty odd people employed in the huge basement kitchen worked at a feverish pace.

Ten waiters scurried constantly back and forth between the restaurant and the kitchen.

By now Pavel was receiving ten rubles instead of eight. He had grown taller and broader in these two years, and many were the trials that fell to his lot. For half a year he had worked as a kitchen boy but had been sent back to the scullery again by the all-powerful chef who had taken a dislike to him—you never knew but what the unruly cub might stick a knife into you if you beat him too often. Indeed Pavel's fiery temper would have lost him the job long since had it not been for his tremendous capacity for hard work. For he could work harder than anyone else and he never seemed to get tired.

During rush hours he would dash with loaded trays up and down the kitchen stairs like a whirlwind, taking several steps at a time.

At night, when the hubbub in both halls of the restaurant subsided, the waiters would gather downstairs in the kitchen storerooms and wild, reckless card games would begin. Pavel often saw large sums of money lying on the tables. He was not surprised, for he knew that each waiter received between thirty and forty rubles a shift in ruble and half ruble tips, which they spent later in drinking and gambling. Pavel hated them.

"The damned swine!" he thought. "There's Artem, a first-class mechanic, and all he gets is forty-eight rubles a month, and I get ten. And they rake in all that money in one day, just for carrying trays back and forth. And then they spend it all on drink and cards."

To Pavel the waiters were as alien and hostile as his employers. "They crawl on their bellies here, the pigs, but their wives and sons strut about town like rich folk."

Sometimes their sons came, wearing smart Gymnasium uniforms, and sometimes their wives, plump and soft with good living. "I bet they have more money than the gentry they serve," Pavel thought. Nor was the lad shocked any longer by what went on at night in the dark corners of the kitchen or in the storerooms. He knew very well that no dishwasher or barmaid would hold her job long if she did not sell herself for a few rubles to those who held the whip hand here.

Pavel, avid of life, had a glimpse of its bottom-most depths, the very sump of its ugly pit, and a musty, mouldy stench, the smell of swamp rot, rose up to him.

Artem was unable to get him hired as an apprentice at the railway yards; they would not take anyone under fifteen. But Pavel was drawn to the huge soot-blackened brick building, and he looked forward to the day when he could get away from the restaurant.

He went to see Artem at the yards frequently, and would go with him to look over the carriages, helping him whenever he could.

He felt particularly lonely after Frosya left. With the gay, laughing girl gone, Pavel felt more keenly than ever how much her friendship had meant to him. Now when he came in the morning to the scullery and listened to the shrill quarrelling of the refugee women he felt a gnawing sense of emptiness and solitude.

During a slack period at night, as he squatted beside his boiler, adding firewood and staring at the flames, he fell to think of Frosya, and a scene he had recently witnessed rose before his mind's eye.

During the night interval on Saturday Pavel was on his way downstairs to the kitchen, when curiosity prompted him to climb onto a pile of firewood to look into the storeroom on the lower landing where the gamblers usually assembled.

The game was in full swing. Zalivanov, flushed with excitement, was keeping the bank.

Just then footsteps sounded on the stairs. Looking around, Pavel saw Prokhoshka coming down,and he slipped under the staircase to let the man pass into the kitchen. It was dark there under the stairs and Prokhoshka could not see him.

As Prokhoshka passed the turning in the stairs, Pavel caught a glimpse of his broad back and hugehead. Just then someone else came hurrying lightly down the steps after the waiter and Pavel heard a familiar voice call out:

"Prokhoshka, wait!"

Prokhoshka stopped and turned around to look up the stairway.

"What d'you want?" he growled.

The footsteps pattered down and soon Frosya came into sight.

She seized the waiter by the arm and spoke in a broken, choking voice.

"Where's the money the Lieutenant gave you, Prokhoshka?"

The man wrenched his arm away from her.

"What money? I gave it to you, didn't I?" His tone was sharp and vicious.

"But he gave you three hundred rubles," Frosya's voice broke into muffled sobs.

"Did he now? Three hundred!" Prokhoshka sneered. "Want to get it all, eh? Flying high for a dishwasher, aren't you, my fine young lady? The fifty I gave you is plenty. Girls a damn sight better than you, educated too, don't take that much. You ought to be thankful for what you got—fifty rubles clear for a night is damn good. All right, I'll give you another ten, maybe twenty, that's all— and if you're not a fool you can earn some more. I can help you." With this Prokhoshka turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

"Scoundrel! Swine!" Frosya screamed after him and, leaning against the woodpile, sobbed bitterly.

It is hard to describe what Pavel felt as he stood in the darkness under the staircase watching Frosya beat her head against the logs of wood. But he did not show himself; only his fingers spasmodically gripped the cast-iron supports of the staircase.

"So they've sold her too, damn them! Oh Frosya, Frosya. . . ."

His hatred for Prokhoshka seared deeper than ever and everything around him was revolting and hateful to him. "If I had the strength I'd beat the scoundrel to death! Why am I not big and strong like Artem?"

The flames under the boiler flared up and died down, their trembling red tongues intertwining into a long bluish spiral; it seemed to Pavel that some jeering, mocking imp was showing its tongue at him.

It was quiet in the room; only the fire crackled and the tap dripped at measured intervals.

Klimka put the last pot, scrubbed until it shone, on the shelf and wiped his hands. There was no one else in the kitchen. The cook on duty and the kitchen help were asleep in the cloakroom. Quiet settled over the kitchen for the three night hours, and these hours Klimka always spent upstairs with Pavel, for a firm friendship had sprung up between the young kitchen boy and the dark-eyed boiler attendant. Upstairs, Klimka found Pavel squatting in front of the open firebox. Pavel saw the shadow of the familiar shaggy figure cast against the wall and said without turning around:

"Sit down, Klimka."

The boy climbed onto the woodpile, stretched out on it and looked at the silent Pavel.

"Trying to tell your fortune in the fire?" he asked, smiling.

Pavel tore his gaze away from the licking tongues of flame and turned on Klimka two large shining eyes brimming over with sadness. Klimka had never seen his friend look so unhappy.

"What's wrong with you today, Pavel?" After a pause he asked: "Anything happened?" Pavel got up and sat next to Klimka. "Nothing's happened," he replied in a low voice. "Only I can't stand it here, Klimka." And his hands resting on his knees clenched into fists.

"What's come over you today?" Klimka insisted, propping himself up on his elbows.

"Today? It's been like this ever since I got this job. Just look at this place! We work like horses and instead of thanks we get blows—anyone can beat you and there's nobody to stick up for you.

The masters hire us to serve them, but anyone who's strong enough has the right to beat us. After all, you can run yourself ragged but you'll never please everybody and those you can't please always have it in for you. No matter how you try to do everything right so that nobody could find fault, there's always bound to be somebody you haven't served fast enough, and then you get it in the neck just the same. . . ."

"Don't shout like that," Klimka interrupted him, frightened. "Somebody might walk in and hear you." Pavel leapt to his feet.

"Let them hear, I'm going to quit anyway. I'd rather shovel snow than hang around this . . . this hole full of crooks. Look at all the money they've got! They treat us like dirt, and do what they like with the girls. The decent girls who won't do what they want are kicked out, and starving refugees who have no place to go are taken on instead. And that sort hang on because here at least they get something to eat, and they're so down and out they'll do anything for a piece of bread."

He spoke with such passion that Klimka, fearing that someone might overhear, sprang up to close the door leading to the kitchen, while Pavel continued to pour out the bitterness that burned inside him.

"And you, Klimka, take the beatings lying down. Why don't you ever speak up?"

Pavel dropped onto a stool at the table and rested his head wearily on the palm of his hand.

Klimka threw some wood into the fire and also sat down at the table.

"Aren't we going to read today?" he asked Pavel.

"There's nothing to read," Pavel replied. "The bookstall's closed."

"Why should it be closed today?" Klimka wondered.

"The gendarmes picked up the bookseller. Found something on him," Pavel replied.

"Picked him up? What for?"

"For .politics, they say."

Klimka stared at Pavel, unable to grasp his meaning.

"Politics. What's that?"

Pavel shrugged his shoulders.

"The devil knows! They say it's politics when you go against the tsar."

Klimka looked startled.

"Do people do that sort of thing?"

"I dunno," replied Pavel.

The door opened and Glasha, her eyelids puffed from sleepiness, walked into the scullery.

"Why aren't you two sleeping? There's time for an hour's nap before the train pulls in. You'd better take a rest, Pavel, I'll see to the boiler for you."

Pavel quit his job sooner than he expected and in a manner he had not foreseen.

One frosty January day when Pavel had finished his shift and was ready to go home he found that the lad who was to relieve him had not shown up. Pavel went to the proprietor's wife and announced that he was going nevertheless, but she would not hear of it. There was nothing for him to do but to carry on, exhausted though he was after a day and night of work. By evening he was ready to drop with weariness. During the night interval he had to fill the boilers and have them ready for the three-o'clock train.