"Iván, my darling, tell your wife the truth: did you not do it?"
Aksénov said, "And you, too, suspect me!" and covered his face with his hands, and began to weep.
Then a soldier came, and told his wife that she must leave with her children. And Aksénov for the last time bade his family farewell.
When his wife had left, Aksénov thought about what they had been talking of. When he recalled that his wife had also suspected him and had asked him whether he had killed the merchant, he said to himself: "Evidently none but God can know the truth, and He alone must be asked, and from Him alone can I expect mercy." And from that time on Aksénov no longer handed in petitions and stopped hoping, but only prayed to God.
Aksénov was sentenced to be beaten with the knout, and to be sent to hard labour. And it was done.
He was beaten with the knout, and later, when the knout sores healed over, he was driven with other convicts to Siberia.
In Siberia, Aksénov passed twenty-six years at hard labour. His hair turned white like snow, and his beard grew long, narrow, and gray. All his mirth went away. He stooped, began to walk softly, spoke little, never laughed, and frequently prayed to God.
In the prison Aksénov learned to make boots, and with the money which he earned he bought himself the "Legends of the Holy Martyrs," and read them while it was light in the prison; on holidays he went to the prison church and read the Epistles, and sang in the choir,—his voice was still good. The authorities were fond of Aksénov for his gentleness, and his prison comrades respected him and called him "grandfather" and "God's man." When there were any requests to be made of the authorities, his comrades always sent him to speak for them, and when the convicts had any disputes between themselves, they came to Aksénov to settle them.
No one wrote Aksénov letters from his home, and he did not know whether his wife and children were alive, or not.