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"
"But how can we help paying it now, if he demands it?"
"Let him cry and ask for it--and you roar--but don't give it to
him."
I'll go up there soon."
Anany Savvich Shchurov was a rich lumber-dealer, had a big saw-
mill, built barges and ran rafts. He had had dealings with Ignat,
and Foma had more than once seen this tall, heavily-bearded, long-
armed, white-haired old man, who kept himself as erect as a pine-
tree. His big, handsome figure, his open face and his clear eyes
called forth in Foma a feeling of respect for Shchurov, although he
heard it rumoured that this lumber-dealer had gained his wealth not
by honest toil and that he was leading an evil life at home, in an
obscure village of the forest district; and Ignat had told Foma
that when Shchurov was young and was but a poor peasant, he
sheltered a convict in the bath-house, in his garden, and that
there the convict made counterfeit money for him. Since that time
Anany began to grow rich. One day his bathhouse burned down, and in
the ashes they discovered the corpse of a man with a fractured
skull.


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