The priests, stock market officials, and police conspire to squeeze income out of pilgrims come to see relics of a Christ like figure. A pair of con men try to pass of a resurrected saint.

Kolyan is an ordinary pickpocket with three terms of imprisonment and a well-formed way of life. Theft is his life, and he does not know what repentance or decency is. Only his small stature is unusual, so small that during one of the thefts he ends up in a purse, from where the owner of the house pulls him out along with ten rubles. The wife is more frightened than if the husband took a live rat out of his pocket, and the little daughter asks to leave this "animal" to her for re-education.