"What do you want it for?"

"Give it to me . . . Perhaps there is something in it about us .
. ."

"About whom?"

"About the village."

They laughed at him, and threw him the paper. He took it, and
read in it how in the village the hail had destroyed the
cornfields, how in another village fire destroyed thirty houses,
and that in a third a woman had poisoned her family,--in fact,
everything that it is customary to write of,--everything, that is
to say, which is bad, and which depicts only the worst side of
the unfortunate village. Tyapa read all this silently and
roared, perhaps from sympathy, perhaps from delight at the sad
news.

He passed the whole Sunday in reading his Bible, and never went
out collecting rags on that day. While reading, he groaned and
sighed continually. He kept the book close to his breast, and
was angry with any one who interrupted him or who touched his
Bible.

"Oh, you drunken blackguard," said Kuvalda to him, "what do you
understand of it?"

"Nothing, wizard! I don't understand anything, and I do not read
any books . . . But I read . . ."