I sat down on the ground and said to myself:
"Some one is running," Ivan whispered low.
I looked down from the mountain. Thick shadows were crawling over it. The sky was clouded, the moon in its last quarter now showed itself, now hid itself in the clouds. The whole earth about me moved, and from this noiseless movement something oppressive and fearful fell on me. I watched the torrents of shadows which flowed over the earth and which covered up the undergrowth and my soul with black veils.
A head moved among the brush, jumping like a ball among the branches. Ivan whistled low and said:
I knew Kostia. He was a boy of about fifteen, blue-eyed, blond and weak. He had finished school two years ago. Mikhail was preparing him to be his assistant.
I understood that I was thinking about these little details on purpose, for I wanted to put my thoughts aside and stifle my shame and my fear.
Kostia arrived panting, his voice broken.
"They have arrived. They have asked for you, Monk. Here, Uncle Peter wrote a note and told me to take you to the Lobanofsky monastery. Let us go."
I rose and said to Ivan: "Good-by, brother. Greet them all for me and ask them to forgive me."
But Kostia pushed me and commanded me severely:
"Go along! Whom are you greeting? They are all taken like hens for the market."
We went along. Kostia went ahead, telling me in a low voice all that he saw below, and I followed him. But I was pulled from all sides, by my hands and the skirts of my coat, as if some one were asking me:
"Where are you going? You have entrapped people and you yourself are escaping."
I spoke aloud, to myself: "So on account of me people were lost!"
The boy answered: "Not on account of you, but on account of truth. Are you truth? What a queer fellow!"
His words were funny and he himself was small, but still they struck home. I wanted to set myself right before him, and I laid out my thoughts as a beggar lays out the crumbs from his bag.
"Yes," I said, "it is evident that a great untruth lives within me."
He muttered, answering each one of my words like a conscience:
"Why great? You must always have something greater in you than any one else."
"Those are not his words," I thought. "He has copied them from some one."