He suddenly wheels round.  Will you believe it, I sprang back, so frightened was I!—­His face had been dreadful before, but now it had become ferocious, frightful!  He was as pale as death, his hair stood on end, his eyes squinted....  I even lost my voice with terror.  I tried to speak and could not; I was perfectly benumbed....  And he fairly rushed out of the church!  I ran after him ... but he fled straight to the tavern where we had put up, flung his wallet over his shoulder, and away he flew!

“Whither?” I shouted to him.  “Yakoff, what aileth thee?  Stop, wait!”

But Yakoff never uttered a word in reply to me, but ran like a hare, and it was utterly impossible to overtake him!  He disappeared from sight.  I immediately turned back, hired a cart, and trembled all over, and all I could say was:  “O Lord!” and, “O Lord!” And I understood nothing:  some calamity had descended upon us!  I set out for home, for I thought, “He has certainly fled thither.”—­And so he had.  Six versts out of the town I espied him; he was striding along the highway.  I overtook him, jumped out of the cart, and rushed to him.

“Yasha!  Yasha!”—­He halted, turned his face toward me, but kept his eyes fixed on the ground and compressed his lips.  And say what I would to him, he stood there just like a statue, and one could just see that he was breathing.  And at last he trudged on again along the highway.—­What was there to do?  I followed him....

Akh, what a journey that was, my dear sir!  Great as had been our joy on the way to Voronezh, just so great was the horror of the return!  I would try to speak to him, and he would begin to gnash his teeth at me over his shoulder, precisely like a tiger or a hyena!  Why I did not go mad I do not understand to this day!  And at last, one night, in a peasant’s chicken-house, he was sitting on the platform over the oven and dangling his feet and gazing about on all sides, when I fell on my knees before him and began to weep, and besought him with bitter entreaty: 

“Do not slay thy old father outright,” I said; “do not let him fall into despair—­tell me what has happened to thee?”

He glanced at me as though he did not see who was before him, and suddenly began to speak, but in such a voice that it rings in my ears even now.

“Listen, daddy,” said he.  “Dost thou wish to know the whole truth?  When I had taken the communion, thou wilt remember, and still held the particle[26] in my mouth, suddenly he (and that was in the church, in the broad daylight!) stood in front of me, just as though he had sprung out of the ground, and whispered to me ... (but he had never spoken to me before)—­whispered:  ‘Spit it out, and grind it to powder!’ I did so; I spat it out, and ground it under foot.  And now it must be that I am lost forever, for every sin shall be forgiven, save the sin against the Holy Spirit....”

And having uttered these dreadful words, my son threw himself back on the platform and I dropped down on the floor of the hut....  My legs failed me....