Several days later Vyesovshchikov came in, as shabby, untidy, and disgruntled as ever.
"Haven't you heard who killed Isay?" He stopped in his clumsy pacing of the room to turn to Pavel.
"No!" Pavel answered briefly.
"There you got a man who wasn't squeamish about the job! And I'd always been preparing to do it myself. It was my job—just the thing for me!"
"Don't talk nonsense, Nikolay," Pavel said in a friendly manner.
"Now, really, what's the matter with you?" interposed the mother kindly. "You have a soft heart, and yet you keep barking like a vicious dog. What do you go on that way for?"
At this moment she was actually pleased to see Nikolay. Even his pockmarked face looked more agreeable to her. She pitied him as never before.
"Well, I'm not fit for anything but jobs like that!" said Nikolay dully, shrugging his shoulders. "I keep thinking, and thinking where my place in the world is. There is no place for me! The people require to be spoken to, and I cannot. I see everything; I feel all the people's wrongs; but I cannot express myself: I have a dumb soul." He went over to Pavel with drooping head; and scraping his fingers on the table, he said plaintively, and so unlike himself, childishly, sadly: "Give me some hard work to do, comrade. I can't live this life any longer. It's so senseless, so useless. You are all working in the movement, and I see that it is growing, and I'm outside of it all. I haul boards and beams. Is it possible to live for the sake of hauling timber? Give me some hard work."
Pavel clasped his hand, pulling him toward himself.
"We will!"