"Yes—he came again."
A shiver passed over Jakov's face, and he looked anxiously here and there.
"He brought a pound of cakes, and tea and sugar. 'You've loafed round here enough,' he said, 'let them send you out!' But I begged the doctors not to send me away yet. It's so jolly here, quiet and comfortable. This is Nikita Jegarowitch. We read together. He has a Bible. He's read it for seven years. He knows it all by heart and can explain the prophecies. When I'm well, I'm going to leave my father and live with Nikita. I'll help him in the church and sing in the choir."
The church servant lifted his eyebrows, underneath which a pair of big dark eyes moved slowly in deep sockets. Quiet and lustreless, they looked at Ilya's face with a fixed, dull look, and Ilya tried involuntarily to avoid them.
"What a lovely book the Bible is!" said Jakov, quite enraptured, Mashka, his father, and all his dreams forgotten. "What things it says, brother! What words!"
His widely-opened eyes glanced from the book to Ilya's face and back again, and he shook with excitement.
"And that saying is in it—do you remember?—that the old preacher said to your uncle in the bar—'The tabernacles of robbers prosper!'—It's there, I found it, and things worse than that!"
Jakov shut his eyes and said solemnly, with uplifted hand:
"'How oft is the candle of the wicked put out, and how oft cometh destruction upon them! God distributed sorrows in his anger'—Do you hear?—'God layeth up his iniquity for his children: He rewardeth him and he shall know it.'"
"Does it really say that?" said Ilya, incredulously.