Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/306

Tales from Tolstoi But the middling-sized old man made a jumble of the words, he said them not as they should be; nor did the tall naked old man bring them out as they ought to have been spoken—his hair grew so thickly round his mouth that he could not speak the words plainly; the toothless old ancient also stammered forth sounds without meaning.

The Archbishop repeated his words once again, the old men repeated them once again also. And the Archbishop sat down on a little stone, and the old men stood around him and looked him in the mouth, and imitated him all the time he was speaking to them. And the Archbishop took pains with them the whole day till the evening; ten, twenty, a hundred times would he repeat one word, and the old men repeated it after him. And whenever they went astray he put them right again, and made them repeat it all over from the beginning.

And the Archbishop never left the old men till they had learnt the whole of the Lord's Prayer. They recited it after him, and they recited it by themselves. First of all the middling-sized old man grasped it and repeated it all. And the Archbishop commanded them to say it again and again, and repeat it yet again, and at last the others recited the whole prayer.

It had already begun to grow dark, and the moon began to rise out of the sea, when the Archbishop arose to go to the ship. The Archbishop took leave of the old men, and they prostrated themselves on the ground before him. He raised them up, kissed each one of them on the forehead, bade them pray 256