taking monastic orders, and of following the course carried out by some
of his fellow-pupils in the academy. One of them was already a bishop,
another an archimandrite and on the way to become a bishop.

At the end of the term Michael Vedensky gave up his post in the school,
took orders under the name of Missael, and very soon got a post as
rector in a seminary in a town on the river Volga.


XIII

MEANWHILE the yard-porter Vassily was marching on the open road down to
the south.

He walked in daytime, and when night came some policeman would get
him shelter in a peasant's cottage. He was given bread everywhere, and
sometimes he was asked to sit down to the evening meal. In a village in
the Orel district, where he had stayed for the night, he heard that
a merchant who had hired the landowner's orchard for the season,
was looking out for strong and able men to serve as watchmen for the
fruit-crops. Vassily was tired of tramping, and as he had also no desire
whatever to go back to his native village, he went to the man who owned
the orchard, and got engaged as watchman for five roubles a month.

Vassily found it very agreeable to live in his orchard shed, and all the
more so when the apples and pears began to grow ripe, and when the men
from the barn supplied him every day with large bundles of fresh straw
from the threshing machine. He used to lie the whole day long on the
fragrant straw, with fresh, delicately smelling apples in heaps at his
side, looking out in every direction to prevent the village boys from