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The searchers appeared at the very time they were not expected, nearly a month after this anxious night. Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was at Pavel's house talking with him and Andrey about their newspaper. It was late, about midnight. The mother was already in bed. Half awake, half asleep, she listened to the low, busy voices.
Three days afterwards in the evening, when the mother sat at the table knitting stockings and the Little Russian was reading to her from a book about the revolt of the Roman slaves, a loud knock was heard at the door. The Little Russian went to open it and admitted Vyesovshchikov with a bundle under his arm, his hat pushed back on his head, and mud up to his knees.
They took different sides of the street, and it was amusing to the mother to see how Vyesovshchikov strode along heavily, with bent head, his legs getting tangled in the long flaps of his russet-colored coat, his hat falling over his nose.
The mother regarded him, and was seized with a feeling of hostility toward this man. "Life is not a horse; you can't set it galloping with a whip," said Andrey. But Vyesovshchikov stubbornly shook his head, and proceeded: "It's slow! I haven't the patience. What am I to do?" He opened his arms in a gesture of helplessness, and waited for a response. "We all must learn and teach others.
She asks you to come to her there." "At the hospital?" Adjusting his eyeglasses with a nervous gesture, Nikolay helped her on with her jacket and pressed her hand in a dry, hot grasp. His voice was low and tremulous. "Yes. Take this package with you. Have you disposed of Vyesovshchikov all right?" "Yes, all right." "I'll come to Yegor, too!"
The mother rose and walked away, saying: "I'm going to get something to eat." Vyesovshchikov looked at the Little Russian fixedly and suddenly declared: "I think that some people ought to be killed off!" "Oho! And pray what for?" asked the Little Russian calmly. "So they cease to be." "Ahem! And have you the right to make corpses out of living people?" "Yes, I have." "Where did you get it from?"
In one of the deserted streets, Sashenka met them, and the mother, taking leave of Vyesovshchikov with a nod of her head, turned toward home with a sigh of relief. "And Pasha is in prison with Andriusha!" she thought sadly. Nikolay met her with an anxious exclamation: "You know that Yegor is in a very bad way, very bad! He was taken to the hospital. Liudmila was here.
The dangerous thoughts about murder left her. If Vyesovshchikov had not killed Isay, none of Pavel's comrades could have done the deed. Pavel listened to the Little Russian with drooping head, and Andrey stubbornly continued in a forceful tone: "In your forward march it sometimes chances that you must go against your very own self. You must be able to give up everything your heart and all.
Some one opened the door. He let her go leisurely, saying: "I will send a matchmaker to you next Sunday." And he did. The mother covered her eyes and heaved a deep sigh. "I do not want to know how people used to live, but how they ought to live!" The dull, dissatisfied voice of Vyesovshchikov was heard in the room. "That's it!" corroborated the red-headed man, rising.
It seemed to her that Nikolay Vyesovshchikov was standing at the gate, his hands thrust into his pockets, regarding her with a smile. But when she looked again nobody was there. "I imagined I saw him," she said to herself, slowly walking up the steps and listening.
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