"Not if you are not, grandfather," answered Sasha, bravely but respectfully.
"If your heart were bad and false, Sasha, you would have reason to be afraid; but as I know it is not, you can come here without fear of danger."
Sasha obeyed. The old man opened the boy's coarse shirt and laid his hand upon his heart; then he made him do the same to himself, so that the heart of each beat directly against the hand of the other.
"Now, boy," said Gregor, after a pause, "I am going to trust you, and if you say a word you do not mean, or think otherwise than you speak, I shall feel it in the motion of your heart. Do you know the difference between a serf and a free-man? Would you rather live like your father, having nothing that he can call his own, or would you live like the Baron Popoff, with wealth, and houses, and lands, and forests, and people, that no one could take from you, except, perhaps, the emperor?"
Sasha's heart gave a great thump before he could open his mouth. The old man smiled, and he said to himself, "I was right." Then he continued: "I should be a free man now, if our colonel had lived. Your father had not wit and courage enough to try, but you can do it, Sasha, if you think of nothing else and work for nothing else. I will help you all I can; but you must begin at once. Will you?"
"Yes, grandfather, yes!" exclaimed Sasha eagerly.
"Promise me that you will say nothing to any living person; that you will obey me and remember all I say to you while I live, and be none the less faithful to the purpose when I am dead!"
Sasha promised everything at once. After a moment's silence Gregor took his hand from the boy's breast, and said:
"Yes, you truly mean it. The people of old used to say that if any one broke a promise made before this stone, the black heathen god would have power over him."
"Perhaps the bear was the black god," suggested Sasha.