Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/286

Tales from Tolstoi pray, and from Him only ought I to look for mercy."

And from henceforth Aksenov ceased to send in petitions, ceased to buoy himself up with hopes, and prayed to God alone.

They condemned Aksenov to be flogged with the knout, and to be sent into hard labour. And so it was done unto him.

They cut him up with the knout, and after that, when the wounds made by the knout healed again, they drove him off with the other hard-labour criminals to Siberia.

At the katorga, in Siberia, Aksenov lived twenty-one years. The hairs of his head grew white as snow, and his beard grew long and thin and grey. All his gaiety died out of him; he grew bent and double; he began to go softly; to talk but little; he never smiled, but often prayed to God. In the prison Ivan learned to sew shoes, and with the money he thus scraped together he bought the Chet'i-Minei, and read them when there was light in the prison, and on festivals he went into the prison chapel, read the Apostol, and sang in the choir—his voice was still quite good. His superiors loved Aksenov for his meekness, and his fellow-prisoners respected him, and called him "little father" and "the godly man." When there were petitions to be made in the prison, his comrades always sent Aksenov to the Governor to plead on their behalf, and when quarrels arose

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