PETER: Ay, ay, he was a merry lad. It is the girl that has the seriousness – she goes about as solemn as a priest for days at a time.

MICHAEL: Vera is always thinking of others.

PETER: There is her mistake, boy. Let God and our little Father the Czar look to the world. It is none of my work to mend my neighbour’s thatch. Why, last winter old Michael was frozen to death in his sleigh in the snowstorm, and his wife and children starved afterwards when the hard times came; but what business was it of mine? I didn’t make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. And then the blight came, and the black plague with it, and the priests couldn’t bury the people fast enough, and they lay dead on the roads – men and women both. But what business was it of mine? I didn’t make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. Or two autumns ago, when the river overflowed on a sudden, and the children’s school was carried away and drowned every girl and boy in it. I didn’t make the world – let God or the Czar look to it.

MICHAEL: But, Father Peter –

PETER: No, no, boy; no man could live if he took his neighbour’s pack on his shoulder. (Enter VERA in peasant’s dress.) Well, my girl, you’ve been long enough away – where is the letter?

VERA: There is none to-day, Father.

PETER: I knew it.

VERA: But there will be one to-morrow, Father.

PETER: Curse him, for an ungrateful son.

VERA: O Father, don’t say that; he must be sick.

PETER: Ay! Sick of Profligacy, perhaps.

VERA: How dare you say that of him, Father? You know that is not true.

PETER: Where does the money go, then? Michael, listen. I gave Dmitri half his mother’s fortune to bring with him to pay the lawyer folk at Moscow. He has only written three times, and every time for more money. He got it, not at my wish, but at hers (pointing to VERA), and now for five months, close on six almost, we have heard nothing from him.

VERA: Father, he will come back.

PETER: Ay! The prodigals always return; but let him never darken my doors again.

VERA (sitting down pensive): Some evil has come on him; he must be dead! Oh! Michael, I am so wretched about Dmitri.

MICHAEL: Will you never love any one but him, Vera?

VERA (smiling): I don’t know; there is so much else to do in the world but love.

MICHAEL: Nothing else worth doing, Vera.

PETER: What noise is that, Vera? (A metallic clink is heard.)