He sat for a moment in silence, with drooping head. Then the old men called him, and they all three went away.
This man had burst upon me like a bonfire in the night. He burned brightly, and when he was extinguished, left me feeling that there was truth in his refusal to live as other men.
In the evening, choosing a good time, I spoke about him excitedly to the head icon-painter. Quiet and kind Ivan Larionovich listened to what I had to say, and explained:
"He belongs to the Byegouns,[1] a sort of sect; they acknowledge no authority."
"How do they live?"
"Like fugitives they wander about the earth; that is why they have been given the name Byegoun. They say that no one ought to have land, or property. And the police look upon them as dangerous, and arrest them."
Although my life was bitter, I could not understand how any one could run away from everything pleasant. In the life which went on around me at that time, there was much that was interesting and precious to me, and Aleksander Vassiliev soon faded from my mind.
[1] Byegouns, or wanderers, still another sect of Old Believers.
But from time to time, in hours of darkness, he appeared to me. He came by the fields, or by the gray road to the forest, pushed his cap aside with a convulsive movement of his white hands, unsoiled by work, and muttered:
"I am going on the straight road; I have no part in this world; I have broken all ties."