notice those who passed him, he would not call to them to look out, he
would not slacken his mad pace, either at the turns of the road or on
the long slopes of the mountain roads. How it happened at such times
that he crushed no one, how he himself was never dashed to death in
one of these mad rides, was inexplicable.

He would have been driven from this place, as he had been driven from
other places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and
thus he remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he
received a letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was
illiterate, and as the others did not understand Esthonian, the letter
remained unread; and as if not understanding that the letter might
bring him tidings from his native home, he flung it into the manure
with a certain savage, grim indifference. At one time Yanson tried to
make love to the cook, but he was not successful, and was rudely
rejected and ridiculed. He was short in stature, his face was
freckled, and his small, sleepy eyes were somewhat of an indefinite
color. Yanson took his failure indifferently, and never again bothered
the cook.

But while Yanson spoke but little, he was listening to something all
the time. He heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered fields, with
their heaps of frozen manure resembling rows of small, snow-covered
graves, the sounds of the blue, tender distance, of the buzzing
telegraph wires, and the conversation of other people. What the fields
and telegraph wires spoke to him he alone knew, and the conversation
of the people were disquieting, full of rumors about murders and
robberies and arson. And one night he heard in the neighboring village
the little church bell ringing faintly and helplessly, and the
crackling of the flames of a fire. Some vagabonds had plundered a rich