My thoughts were like water-hens in a puddle, jumping from stump to stump.
"Have you read the 4 Lives of the Saints'?" I asked the boy.
"I read them when I was little. My mother made me. Why?"
"Did you like those chosen ones of God?"
"I don't know. Ponteleimon I liked; and George also. He fought with the dragon. But I don't know what good it did the people to have dozens of them made holy."
Kostia grew in my eyes.
"If a Czar's daughter or a rich man's daughter believed in Christ and underwent martyrdom for her belief, neither the Czar nor the kingdom were ever better to the people for it? It is not spoken of in the legends that the tyrant Czars became good."
Then, after a silence, he said:
"Nor do I know of what good Christ's martyrdom was. He wanted to conquer suffering, and what came of it?"
He grew thoughtful and then added: