Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/54

 and most grateful to him because he did not hide that knowledge but shared it eagerly with them helping and encouraging those who showed an interest to learn. His beehives were located in the forest and every clear day he went there to look after them in spite of the bad roads, mud, snowdrifts and the distance.

But the Tukholian people came to love him best of all for his healing regarding him as their greatest benefactor because of his skill. When the proper time came, sometime between the seventh week after Easter and the holiday of John The Baptist (between the months of May and July) Zakhar, taking his youngest son Maxim, would leave for the hills to spend several weeks gathering herbs and medicinal roots.

The simple, wholesome life of the times, well-built, roomy houses and continuous though not too strenuous toil, the fresh, rarified mountain air of Tukhlia, protected the people from iterative and infectious diseases. However, there were frequent accidents, broken bones, cuts and bruises which no other healer could fix and cure as rapidly and efficiently as Zakhar Berkut. But upon none of these superior accomplishments was Zakhar content to rest for the remainder of his life. “Life is worth while,” he was often heard to say, “only as long as a man can help others. As soon as he becomes a burden, cannot perform useful tasks, then he is no longer a man but a dead weight, not fit to be allowed to live. God forbid that I should ever become a burden to anyone or require their charity, no matter how well I might have earned my keep in the past years of service.” These words were the golden thread of which Zakhar’s ideal was spun and by which the moral grandeur of his life was led. Everything he did, said and everything he thought was always all for the benefit and good of others, and especially of the community. The community was his world.

While he was still a very young man, he had noticed how the wild beasts of the forests often crippled domestic animals