“ Okh! Sir, your excellency!” replied the old man, with grief expressed in his tone, looking apprehensively toward the door. “Only enough to feed my family, not enough to buy woodland.”
“But you know you have money—what do you do with it?” insisted Nekhliudof.
The old man suddenly fell into a terrible state of excitement: his eyes flashed, his shoulders began to twitch.
“Wicked men may say all sorts of things about me,” he muttered in a trembling voice. “But, so may God be my witness!” he said, growing more and more animated, and turning his eyes toward the icon, “may my eyes crack, may I perish with all my family, if I have anything more than the fifteen silver rubles which Ilyushka brought home; and we have to pay the poll-tax, you yourself know that. And we built the hut—”
“Well, well, all right,” said the prince, rising from the bench. “Goodbye, friends.”