“You don’t understand?  She, as a member of the Old Faith, murdered him through fanaticism.  It was not only that she was putting to death a weed, a profligate—­she was freeing the world of an antichrist!—­and there, in her opinion, was her service, her religious achievement!  Oh, you don’t know those old maids of the Old Faith.  Read Dostoyevsky!  And what does Lyeskoff say about them, or Petcherski?  It was she, and nobody else, even if you cut me open.  She smothered him!  O treacherous woman! wasn’t that the reason why she was kneeling before the icons, when we came in, just to take our attention away?  ’Let me kneel down and pray,’ she said to herself, ’and they will think I am tranquil and did not expect them!’ That is the plan of all novices in crime, Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch, old pal!  My dear old man, won’t you intrust this business to me?  Let me personally bring it through!  Friend, I began it and I will finish it!”

Chubikoff shook his head and frowned.

“We know how to manage difficult matters ourselves,” he said; “and your business is not to push yourself in where you don’t belong.  Write from dictation when you are dictated to; that is your job!”

Dukovski flared up, banged the door, and disappeared.

“Clever rascal!” muttered Chubikoff, glancing after him.  “Awfully clever!  But too much of a hothead.  I must buy him a cigar case at the fair as a present.”

The next day, early in the morning, a young man with a big head and a pursed-up mouth, who came from Klausoff’s place, was introduced to the magistrate’s office.  He said he was the shepherd Daniel, and brought a very interesting piece of information.

“I was a bit drunk,” he said.  “I was with my pal till midnight.  On my way home, as I was drunk, I went into the river for a bath.  I was taking a bath, when I looked up.  Two men were walking along the dam, carrying something black.  ‘Shoo!’ I cried at them.  They got scared, and went off like the wind toward Makareff’s cabbage garden.  Strike me dead, if they weren’t carrying away the master!”

That same day, toward evening, Psyekoff and Nicholas were arrested and brought under guard to the district town.  In the town they were committed to the cells of the prison.

II

A fortnight passed.

It was morning.  The magistrate Nicholas Yermolaiyevitch was sitting in his office before a green table, turning over the papers of the “Klausoff case”; Dukovski was striding restlessly up and down, like a wolf in a cage.

“You are convinced of the guilt of Nicholas and Psyekoff,” he said, nervously plucking at his young beard.  “Why will you not believe in the guilt of Maria Ivanovna?  Are there not proofs enough for you?”

“I don’t say I am not convinced.  I am convinced, but somehow I don’t believe it!  There are no real proofs, but just a kind of philosophizing—­fanaticism, this and that——­”