Former monastery orphan Pashka Openkov was secretly tonsured a monk years later and sent as a hieromonk to a distant rural parish, where he served the Church and people for many years. Having preserved the childlike purity of his soul, living in unity with nature, Father Paul meets with the distrustful Deacon Valasius and the cynicism of other high-ranking officials of his diocese. And in his soul the question arises: did he correctly devote himself to God, cutting off the possibility of procreation through monasticism - after all, only in the memory of descendants and people to whom he did good is the eternity of the Soul preserved. Sick and scolded by the “hidden men of Grace”, losing his last strength, he tries to go out to people, but on the way to the village he finds himself in a dense spruce forest, where nothing grows under a thick cover of pine needles and from which he can no longer crawl out. “Everything froze in Pavel. Only the last piece of thought remained, which grieved for a long time that in the place of life where he grew up, neither his father, nor mother, nor grandfathers and great-grandfathers remained..."