"She only was your wife. Now she is your brother's. Whoever is banished for life to the Ural mines is at the same time separated for ever from his wife, and she can at once marry again. That is how it happened. You were too long gone, and love in absence, they say, is difficult."
"But she had her son!" cried the Captain in a tone of agony. "Was not he enough to love? And such a son, too! Tell me, what have they done with my son?"
"You know well the custom, surely? When the father is banished the child is outlawed also. Son must follow father, and in order that he may never return, he is branded with a red-hot iron on the shoulder."
The Captain seemed about to reply, but the words died away upon his lips.
Suddenly he seized the girl's shoulders in his powerful grasp, and began to stare intently into her eyes. For it is a common belief in Volhynia that there are many unhappy mortals possessed by the Evil One in such a way that he takes up his abode in their eyeballs. Then, by means of all manner of phantoms and illusions, he causes them to "see the things that are not." About such sights the victims talk as if they were perfectly real. But it is believed that if a truly brave and upright man who fears not the Evil One seizes the possessed person firmly by the shoulders, gazes unflinchingly into the bewitched eyes until he perceives the demon lurking within, and then quickly and unexpectedly spits into them—then the Evil Spirit is confounded and flies in confusion from the possessed one's eyes. Thus did Captain Feodor.
"Ah, yes! It may be—it may, indeed, be so," said the girl resignedly, as she wiped her eyes with the hem of her apron. "Often have I asked myself whether all I have seen and heard is not merely falsehood and deceit. It may be all the devil's work. Oh, would to God it were so! I would bless you every day of my life for driving the curse out of me. But, Master, I beseech you, cross the threshold of that hut and look within. If you see nothing, then the Evil One has indeed been at his juggling tricks with me, making me see and speak the things that are not."
Feodor stepped into the tumble-down hut to which Mashinka had pointed. The first thing that met his gaze was his little son lying on a heap of dirty straw. The little shirt had slipped down over one shoulder, and upon this the mark of the branding-iron was clearly seen. Feodor knelt down, buried his face in the straw beside the boy, and clasped him in his arms. But he uttered no cry and shed no tear.
"Why, my good Master," said the girl, "surely you, too, have become possessed, and see things that do not exist."
Meantime the child did not cry. He trembled violently; for fear, and pain, and fever were working together. The father wrapped him in his cloak, and laid him tenderly across his knees.
"Now listen," said Mashinka, "to all that the Evil One must have put into my eyes and ears, if, indeed, it is all nothing but his black magic. Your own steward had orders to bring all your treasure in a great iron chest along with the child to Tsarskoye Selo. Your brother and your wife were already in St. Petersburg—together. The treasure was to be divided among I know not how many of the high court officials. Your wife, of course, fell to the informer's portion, and the child was sent off later in order to be transported to the Urals along with you. As the boy begged most piteously for me I was allowed to travel along with him. He cried during the whole journey with the pain caused by the branding-iron. At last the steward could no longer bear his constant moaning in the carriage, and ordered me to get down and gather some poppy-heads in the field, so that I might make an infusion of them and put the child to sleep. So I gathered a great many poppy-heads and made them into a good strong tea at our next stopping-place. But I did not give it to the boy to drink. I mixed it among the brandy which the steward, the driver, and the Cossacks were drinking, and it was not long before their heads were nodding under it.