One day, while the inmates of the tower were preparing for one of their fiendish festivals, the Master's little son came into Mashinka's room. He had just come up from the underground "chapel." The boy's face looked sorely troubled. When Mashinka asked what ailed him, he whispered softly to her:

"Something makes me so sad—what it is I cannot tell. But this at least I know—I hate my father!"Then Mashinka took the boy's cold hand in hers and tried to soothe away the pain that filled his heart. She taught him how he ought to love both his Heavenly and his earthly father, even though both should chastise their child so severely that love was moved to give place to fear.

Thus the evil seeds which the Master was perpetually striving to sow in his son's heart by night, were ever rooted up again in the daytime by the poor Volhynian peasant girl.