"I was always so frightened of the police. I thought when they first got hold of me and began to cuff me, they'd kill me. But what d'you think it was like really? He just came softly behind and nipped me by the collar--snap!--I was looking at the watches in a jeweller's window. Oh, such a lot. Gold ones and others. All at once--snap! I began to howl, and he says quite friendly, 'who are you? Where do you come from?' So I just told him--they found it out, they know everything. 'Where do you want to go?' they ask you then. I said 'I'm wandering about'--they laughed. Then I went to gaol. They all laughed there, and then the young gentlemen took me--they were devils if you like--oho!"
Pashka never spoke of the "gentlemen" without interjections--evidently they had made a deep impression on him, though their aspect had become vague in his memory like a big, dark spot. Pashka remained a month with the cobbler, then disappeared again. Later on Perfishka found out that he had entered a printing works as an apprentice and was living in a distant quarter of the town. When Ilya heard it he was filled with envy and said to Jakov with a sigh:
"And we two have got to stay rotting here!"
At first after Pashka's disappearance Ilya felt as though he missed something, but soon he slipped back into his unreal wonderworld. The book-reading proceeded busily and Ilya's soul fell into a pleasant half-asleep condition.
The awakening was sudden and unexpected. Ilya was just starting for school one day when his uncle said to him:
"You'll soon be done with learning now. You're fourteen years old. You'll have to look out for a place for yourself."
"Of course," added Petrusha, "that won't be difficult among all our acquaintances. There's a place ready for Jashka--another year and he goes behind the counter. And for you, Terenti, I'll open another place close by, you can run it on account, and be your own master. H'm, yes! I may well thank the Lord. He has cared for me."
Ilya heard these speeches as though they came from somewhere a great way off. They bore no relation to anything that he was busied with then, and left him completely cold. But one day his uncle waked him early in the morning and said:----