"Gone?"--Father Leo crossed himself--"where to?"
"Don't know--he and mother----"
"To the meeting?"
"Don't know," repeated the little one, sobbing more violently. "Mother was crying, and father was crying!" But the hen appeared to make its escape, and the child was after it.
"They can only have gone to the meeting," said the pope to himself, retracing his steps speedily.
The inn with the linden in front of it was a little way beyond the church. The village seemed deserted; only a tottering old man in front of a cottage sat basking in the sun. "I wish you would send my grand-daughter back," he called out, querulously, "Taras will have plenty of listeners without her."
Father Leo, indeed, found the place crowded; the very oldest and youngest excepted, none of the village were missing. For the "general meeting" is an event, and duly appreciated. The faces of the people reflected its importance as they thronged in a circle about the linden, where a table had been placed by way of a platform for the speaker.
Taras was just mounting it when Father Leo arrived; a murmur of expectation ran through the people, of pity, too, with most, and of spite with some. But surely this latter sensation was smitten with shame at the sight of the unhappy man about to address them. His hair had become grey, his face was worn, and his eyes burned with a piteous fire deep in their sockets.
"Ye men of the village," he began, with trembling, yet far-sounding voice, "and all of you who are members of this parish, I thank you for coming here, and I thank the judge for having called this meeting. For although it is but a duty on your part, and on his, to hear me, yet a man who has lived to see what I have seen, is grateful even for that much!
"Jewgeni will have told you why you are here: I want to render an account--yet not concerning the past, as he seems to think, but concerning that which is at hand. Listen, then, to what a man has to tell you who has been happy and has become unhappy, because justice is what he has loved and striven for most. Some of you love me, others hate me, and I daresay I have grown indifferent to many. But I pray you listen to me without love or hatred, as you would listen to a stranger whom death overtakes in your village, and who is anxious to unburden his soul before he goes hence. You would have no personal sympathy with such a one, but you would believe him because he is a dying man. Well then, believe me likewise, for I am a dying for your sakes!"