In the middle of a huge metropolis made of concrete, steel, and glass, stood an old one-storey log house surrounded by an apple orchard. It was an unusual orchard because it produced crops every day.

And every single day apples were plucked by citizens who hurriedly rushed about their business, so there was not a single apple left by evening. But by morning, they grew again.

Surly, scrawny Matthias was the landlord. That orchard had been inherited from his father who had inherited it from his own, and people said that the apple trees had been standing there since the world was very young.

Matthias loved his apple trees more than anything else in the universe. And more than anything, he hated people and the noise of city. Sometimes he would looked at the orсhard all night long until sunrise, but every time he fell asleep and missed the moment when the unstoppable crowd destroyed his precious crops.

One day, Matthias decided to punish all the people in the city, and at night he dug an enormously large pit beside his orchard. When he woke up in the morning, he heard a deathly silence reigning over the usually bustling city. He looked into the pit and saw the entire population of the city at the bottom. Millions of people stood on the ground, raising their heads and silently looked up at Matthias.

The old man picked an apple from the tree and threw it into the pit.

The people, as if possessed by the devil, fought for every piece of the apple. During this battle, they stomped, scratched, and bit each other, and finally fell quiet.

Matthias sighed with relief, smiled, and stepped back from the pit. All that day, he calmly took care of the trees, and then he fell asleep in pleasant noiselessness. But when he woke up, he saw rotten apples crawling with disgusting worms. Horrified, he tore off the crops, threw them away, and waited for new ones to grow. But as the days passed, the trees stood barren.

Finally, suffering from the silence and grief-stricken, Matthias decided on a terrible action. He cut down the trees. He split the logs, made a rough stairway, and threw it into the pit. After that, he left the apple orchard without looking back. He stepped into obscurity of the huge metropolis made of concrete, steel, and glass. And he disappeared.