At the end of the street a stripling with bright eyes and yellow curls clutched the hand of Ivan and looked into his face.
“Ay, _you_ know,” said Ivan, looking into the eyes of the other.
“It came to me yesterday,” murmured the stripling. “I got it from the breezes. They are free, so are the birds and the little clouds and the river. I wish I could go.”
“Keep your dream,” said Ivan softly. “Nurse it, for it is the dream of a man.”
Anna, who was crying softly, touched the blouse of the boy. “At the back of our cottage, near the bush that bears the red berries, a pot is buried,” she said. “Dig it up and take it home with you and when you have a kopeck drop it in. It is a good pot.”
The stripling understood. He stooped and kissed the hand of Anna, and Big Ivan patted him upon the back. They were brother dreamers and they understood each other.
Boris Lugan has sung the song of the versts that eat up one’s courage as well as the leather of one’s shoes.
“Versts! Versts! Scores and scores of them! Versts! Versts! A million or more of them! Dust! Dust! And the devils who play in it Blinding us fools who forever must stay in it.”
Big Ivan and Anna faced the long versts to Bobruisk, but they were not afraid of the dust devils. They had the Dream. It made their hearts light and took the weary feeling from their feet. They were on their way. America was a long, long journey, but they had started, and every verst they covered lessened the number that lay between them and the Promised Land.
“I am glad the boy spoke to us,” said Anna.
“And I am glad,” said Ivan. “Some day he will come and eat with us in America.”
They came to Bobruisk. Holding hands, they walked into it late one afternoon. They were eighty-nine versts from the little village on the Beresina, but they were not afraid. The Dream spoke to Ivan, and his big hand held the hand of Anna. The railway ran through Bobruisk, and that evening they stood and looked at the shining rails that went out in the moonlight like silver tongs reaching out for a low-hanging star.
And they came face to face with the Terror that evening, the Terror that had helped the spring breezes and the sunshine to plant the Dream in the brain of Big Ivan.
They were walking down a dark side street when they saw a score of men and women creep from the door of a squat, unpainted building. The little group remained on the sidewalk for a minute as if uncertain about the way they should go, then from the corner of the street came a cry of “Police!” and the twenty pedestrians ran in different directions.