Thus she wept, thus she entreated him, and, young as he was, her words were engraven on his brain and sunk deep into his soul. It was not in vain that, in order to save her child, she had staked the one thing left to her in life--the love of that child. Her own great love for him was her safeguard that his hatred for others, which she strove against, should not fall back upon her, who owned herself guilty, and for whom she said he suffered. Taras continued to love his mother; and when he inquired what it could have been whereby she had wronged all the righteous people, and she told him he was too young to understand, he was satisfied. But her words lived in his heart, laying the foundation of a marvellous development of character, teaching him, at an age when other children think but of eating and playing, that he must believe the world to be just, and that his own act must be the umpire of reward or punishment to follow. Thus he suffered ill-will without bitterness, but also, knowing he had not himself deserved it, without humiliation; and when, having reached his tenth year, he was chosen to be the gooseherd of the village--not, indeed, with the goodwill of all, but simply because no other serviceable lad had offered--he burned with a desire to gain for himself commendation and approval. And he did gain it, because he worked for it bravely, but also because of a fearful experience which happened to him about a twelvemonth later, shaking his young soul to its inmost depth.
It was an autumnal morning; he had driven forth his geese with the grey dawn as usual. They fed on a lonely common; a cross stood there by the side of a pond, but not a cottage within hail, and the foot-path which traversed it was rarely used. The boy had his favourite seat on a stone by the water, at the foot of the cross; he was sitting there now contentedly eating some of the bread which his mother had given him, and whistling between whiles on a reed-pipe he had made for himself.
He was startled by a heavy footfall, and, turning, grew pale, for he that approached him was a spiteful, wicked old man, Waleri Kostarenko by name, one of the worst of those who delighted in bullying him. "You are but a cur!" he would call out when the lad passed his farm, and more than once he had set his dogs at him. And one day, finding him at play with his own grandchildren, he beat him so mercilessly that the little fellow could scarcely limp home for bruises. Nor was it any regard for morality he could plead in wretched excuse. Taras's mother had been a servant on his farm, and had been proof against his wiles, so he was the first to cry shame when trouble overtook her, and like a fiend he delighted in ill-using her child. Taras got out of his way whenever he could, and on the present occasion took to his sturdy little legs, as though pursued by the caitiff's dogs. It was not merely the loneliness of the place which made it advisable to seek refuge in flight, but the fact that the old man, as the boy had seen in spite of his terror, was in a worse condition than usual. There had been a merry-making the day before in a neighbouring village, and his unsteady feet showed plainly that the power of drink was upon him.