"If they only don't find what I have hidden, I don't care what they do."
He arranged the books with care in the pit, covered them over, smoothed the earth down and threw brush upon it. He sat down on the ground, and seeing that I was getting ready to go away, he said:
"Some one will come with a note for you. Wait." "What kind of a note?"
"I don't know."
I looked out from the trees into the valley. The factory breathed heavily, like a strong man who is being choked. It seemed to me that men were being pursued in the streets and that in the darkness they ran after one another; they fought, they snarled in anger, ready to break each other's bones. And Ivan, without haste, was getting ready to go down.
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
"They will take you."
"I am not long in the movement, and they do not know me. And if they take me, there is no harm done. People come out wiser from prison."
Here some one loudly and clearly asked me: "How is it, Matvei? You are not afraid of God, and yet you fear the gendarmes."