Vanka Zhukov, a nine-year-old boy, had been apprenticed to the shoemaker Alyahin three months before. On Christmas Eve he did not go to bed. He waited until the master, the mistress, and the workmen had left for the early church service. Then he took from the master's cupboard a small bottle of ink and a pen with a rusty nib. Spreading a crumpled sheet of paper before him, he began to write. Before he formed the first letter, he looked round several times at the doors and the windows, glanced at the dark icon, and gave a deep sigh. The paper lay on the bench, and he himself knelt before it. "Dear grandfather, Konstantin Makarich," he wrote, "I am writing you a letter. I wish you a happy Christmas and everything good from the Lord God. I have no father and no mother, and you alone are left to me."