Insecurity was, so to speak, the soil on which he lived, and the
hurried, shrinking glances he continually cast, as if from habit,
towards the cellar door--even when his often guilt-laden conscience felt
itself most guiltless--were only the fruit of daily experience.

"You could see the bad conscience in his face, a long way off," said
Mrs. Holman; and it was true--the quick, watchful look up with the grey
eyes was to see what sins he was guilty of now.

"Good neighbours and other good things," the catechism says. But in our
times we have no neighbours; you do not know who lives on the floor
above you or on the floor below, or even on the other side of the
passage. And so it was that no one in the house had any ear to speak of
for Nikolai's various untoward fortunes below in the cellar, although
their character often asserted itself with no uncertain sound during
their execution.

The neighbours had become accustomed to the continual screaming and
howling of that naughty boy, just as one accustoms one's self to piano
practising or the din of a factory; perhaps too, they comforted
themselves with the thought that it was most fortunate that such a
morally depraved child had come under discipline and correction.

When Nikolai and Silla wandered as usual up and down the pavement
outside the cellar, the people of the house might often in passing give
the little girl a friendly nod. To give Nikolai any encouragement in
that way would have been a mistake.

Maren, the cook, who had come to the floor above last hiring-day[1], had