"They have arrived. They have asked for you, Monk. Here, Uncle Peter wrote a note and told me to take you to the Lobanofsky monastery. Let us go."
I rose and said to Ivan: "Good-by, brother. Greet them all for me and ask them to forgive me."
But Kostia pushed me and commanded me severely:
"Go along! Whom are you greeting? They are all taken like hens for the market."
We went along. Kostia went ahead, telling me in a low voice all that he saw below, and I followed him. But I was pulled from all sides, by my hands and the skirts of my coat, as if some one were asking me:
"Where are you going? You have entrapped people and you yourself are escaping."
I spoke aloud, to myself: "So on account of me people were lost!"
The boy answered: "Not on account of you, but on account of truth. Are you truth? What a queer fellow!"
His words were funny and he himself was small, but still they struck home. I wanted to set myself right before him, and I laid out my thoughts as a beggar lays out the crumbs from his bag.
"Yes," I said, "it is evident that a great untruth lives within me."