"No work to be had?"
He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, he and work had long been strangers.
"Where are you going to?"
"To London. I was there once already, and made money. I sent my wife ten rubles a week, and lived like a human being. The bad luck brought me home again."
I wondered if the "bad luck" were his wife.
"Why not have sent for your family to join you?"
"It drew me back! It's black as night over there. As soon as ever I closed an eye, I dreamt of the little town, the river round it, ... I felt suffocated there, and it drew me and drew me...."
"This is certainly," I remark, "a beautiful bit of country."
"The air costs nothing, and we have been living on air, heaven be praised, these three years. This time I am going with wife and child. I mean to put an end to it."
"You will miss the wood again!"