Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/340

326 they went to bed: the father and son lay down together, the mother lay at their feet, and it was long before they could get through talking. How cozily I think the son cuddled up to his father's heart, and how wonderful and comfortable it was to him, as he lay half awake, to hear those two voices, one of which he had not heard for so long.

It would seem that the story was concluded: the father had returned; poverty was a thing of the past. But Fedka was not satisfied with this,—these imaginary people were too real and too vivid in his imagination,—he needed still to imagine a vivid picture of their changed existence, and to present before himself clearly that the peasant woman was no longer a lonely, woe-begone wife of a soldier, with little children, but that there was now in the house a strong man, who would lift from his wife's weary shoulders the burden of crushing misfortunes and poverty, and lead a new life independent, firm, and cheerful.

And with this object in view he pictures for us only one scene: how the lusty soldier with a nicked ax is cutting wood and carrying it into the izba. You see how the keen-eyed little lad, accustomed to the groaning of the feeble mother and grandmother, contemplates with amazement, respect, and pride his father's muscular bare arms, the energetic blows of the ax falling with the panting breath of a man's labor, and the log which like a sliver is splintered under the gap-toothed ax.

You look at all this and are perfectly satisfied about the subsequent life of the soldier's wife. I say to myself, she will now no longer be in despair, poor thing.

"In the morning mother got up, came to father, and said:—

"'Gordyeï! get up, we need firewood for the oven.'

"Batya got up, dressed himself, put on his cap, and said:—

"'Is there an ax?'

"Mother said:—

"'Yes, but very dull, I'm sorry to say, and it won't cut.'

"My father took the ax firmly in both hands, went to