The next day when Nilovna came up to the gates of the factory with her load, the guides stopped her roughly, and ordering her to put the pails down on the ground, made a careful examination.

“My eatables will get cold,” she observed calmly, as they felt around her dress.

“Shut up!” said a guard sullenly.

Another one, tapping her lightly on the shoulder, said with assurance:

“Those books are thrown across the fence, I say!”

Old man Sizov came up to her and looking around said in an undertone:

“Did you hear, mother?”

“What?”

“About the pamphlets. They’ve appeared again. They’ve just scattered them all over like salt over bread. Much good those arrests and searches have done! My nephew Mazin has been hauled away to prison, your son’s been taken. Now it’s plain it isn’t he!” And stroking his beard Sizov concluded, “It’s not people, but thoughts, and thoughts are not fleas; you can’t catch them!”

He gathered his beard in his hand, looked at her, and said as he walked away:

“Why don’t you come to see me some time? I guess you are lonely all by yourself.”

She thanked him, and calling her wares, she sharply observed the unusual animation in the factory. The workmen were all elated, they formed little circles, then parted, and ran from one group to another. Animated voices and happy, satisfied faces all around! The soot-filled atmosphere was astir and palpitating with something bold and daring. Now here, now there, approving ejaculations were heard, mockery, and sometimes threats.

“Aha! It seems truth doesn’t agree with them,” she heard one say.

The younger men were in especially good spirits, while the elder workmen had cautious smiles on their faces. The authorities walked about with a troubled expression, and the police ran from place to place. When the workingmen saw them, they dispersed, and walked away slowly, or if they remained standing, they stopped their conversation, looking silently at the agitated, angry faces.

The workingmen seemed for some reason to be all washed and clean. The figure of Gusev loomed high, and his brother stalked about like a drake, and roared with laughter. The joiner’s foreman, Vavilov, and the record clerk, Isay, walked slowly past the mother. The little, wizened clerk, throwing up his head and turning his neck to the left, looked at the frowning face of the foreman, and said quickly, shaking his reddish beard:

“They laugh, Ivan Ivanovich. It’s fun to them. They are pleased, although it’s no less a matter than the destruction of the government, as the manager said. What must be done here, Ivan Ivanovich, is not merely to weed but to plow!”

Vavilov walked with his hands folded behind his back, and his fingers tightly clasped.

“You print there what you please, you blackguards!” he cried aloud. “But don’t you dare say a word about me!”

Vasily Gusev came up to Nilovna and declared:

“I am going to eat with you again. Is it good today?” And lowering his head and screwing up his eyes, he added in an undertone: “You see? It hit exactly! Good! Oh, mother, very good!”

She nodded her head affably to him, flattered that Gusev, the sauciest fellow in the village, addressed her with a respectful plural “you,” as he talked to her in secret. The general stir and animation in the factory also pleased her, and she thought to herself: “What would they do without me?”

Three common laborers stopped at a short distance from her, and one of them said with disappointment in his voice: “I couldn’t find any anywhere!”

Another remarked: “I’d like to hear it, though. I can’t read myself, but I understand it hits them just in the right place.”

The third man looked around him, and said: “Let’s go into the boiler room. I’ll read it for you there!”

“It works!” Gusev whispered, a wink lurking in his eye.

Nilovna came home in gay spirits. She had now seen for herself how people are moved by books.

“The people down there are sorry they can’t read,” she said to Andrey, “and here am I who could when I was young, but have forgotten.”

“Learn over again, then,” suggested the Little Russian.

“At my age? What do you want to make fun of me for?”

Andrey, however, took a book from the shelf and pointing with the tip of a knife at a letter on the cover, asked: “What’s this?”

“R,” she answered, laughing.

“And this?”

“A.&rd............