Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/236

 220 soul with cool simplicity, and like a little dove takes refuge in the warm bosom."

"Continue, Father Kiriak," I said, "I am waiting for the story of the other miracle."

"I will tell you about the other at once, Vladyko. It happened when I was further from Him—of little faith—when I was on the way here, sitting at the back of the carriage. It had been necessary to take me out of the Russian school and bring me here just before the examinations. I did not mind this as I was always first in my class, and would have been accepted in the seminary even without an examination; but the head-master gave me a certificate in which he wrote: 'in every subject moderately good.' 'I give you this,' he said, 'on purpose; for our reputation, so that you should have to pass an examination there, and they might see what scholars we look upon as moderately good.' Both my father and I were terribly unhappy about it; and to add to this, though my father had ordered me to continue learning all the way, one day while sitting on the foot-board behind the carriage I had the misfortune to fall asleep and in crossing a river, at the ford, lost all my books. I cried bitterly at the loss, and my father gave me a severe flogging for it at the wayside inn; nevertheless before we reached Siberia I had forgotten all this and began again to pray like a little child: