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Rh thought to spare for Gerasim; they let their mother's other servants redeem their freedom on payment of an annual rent.

And Gerasim is living still, a lonely man in his lonely hut; he is strong and healthy as before, and does the work of four men as before, and as before is serious and steady. But his neighbors have observed that ever since his return from Moscow he has quite given up the society of women; he will not even look at them, and does not keep even a single dog. "It's his good luck, though," the peasants reason, "that he can get on without female folk; and as for a dog—what need has he of a dog? you would n't get a thief to go into his yard for any money!" Such is the fame of the dumb man's Titanic strength.