He had gone to the gate and disappeared. The
banker instantly went with his servants to the wing and established
the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumours he took the
paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked
it in his safe.
VANKA
BY ANTON P. CHEKHOV
Nine-year-old Vanka Zhukov, who had been apprentice to the shoemaker
Aliakhin for three months, did not go to bed the night before
Christmas. He waited till the master and mistress and the assistants
had gone out to an early church-service, to procure from his
employer's cupboard a small phial of ink and a penholder with a rusty
nib; then, spreading a crumpled sheet of paper in front of him, he
began to write.
Before, however, deciding to make the first letter, he looked
furtively at the door and at the window, glanced several times at the
sombre ikon, on either side of which stretched shelves full of lasts,
and heaved a heart-rending sigh. The sheet of paper was spread on a
bench, and he himself was on his knees in front of it.
"Dear Grandfather Konstantin Makarych," he wrote, "I am writing you a
letter.
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