Not only did they sing songs together, but Savelko and Larion carried on long conversations with each other—often about the devil. They did not give him much honor.
Once I remember the sexton saying:
"The devil is the image of your own wickedness, the reflection of your own dark soul."
"That means, he is my own foolishness?" Savelko asked.
"Just that and nothing else."
"It must be so," Migun said, laughing. "For were he alive, he would have snatched me up long ago!"
Larion didn't believe in devils at all. I remember him discussing in the barn with the Dissenters and he shouting:
"It is not devilish, but brutish! Good and evil are in man. When you want goodness, goodness is there; if you want evil, evil is there, from you and for you. God does not force you by His Will either to good or evil. He created you free-willed, and you are free to do both good and evil. Your devil is misery and darkness! Good is really something human, because it springs from God, while your evil doesn't come from the devil, but from the brute in you."
They shouted at him:
"Red-haired heretic!"