“To be sure; rather than live, as you do, a beggar, I should have gone to her long ago.”

“I will go!  As God’s above, I will go.  It’s her duty.”

When an hour later the old friends were drinking a glass of vodka, Zotov stood in the middle of the shop and said with enthusiasm: 

“I have been meaning to go to her for a long time; I will go this very day.”

“To be sure; rather than hanging about and dying of hunger, you ought to have gone to the farm long ago.”

“I’ll go at once!  When I get there, I shall say:  Take my house, but keep me and treat me with respect.  It’s your duty!  If you don’t care to, then there is neither my house, nor my blessing for you!  Good-bye, Ivanitch!”

Zotov drank another glass, and, inspired by the new idea, hurried home.  The vodka had upset him and his head was reeling, but instead of lying down, he put all his clothes together in a bundle, said a prayer, took his stick, and went out.  Muttering and tapping on the stones with his stick, he walked the whole length of the street without looking back, and found himself in the open country.  It was eight or nine miles to the farm.  He walked along the dry road, looked at the town herd lazily munching the yellow grass, and pondered on the abrupt change in his life which he had only just brought about so resolutely.  He thought, too, about his dependents.  When he went out of the house, he had not locked the gate, and so had left them free to go whither they would.

He had not gone a mile into the country when he heard steps behind him.  He looked round and angrily clasped his hands.  The horse and Lyska, with their heads drooping and their tails between their legs, were quietly walking after him.

“Go back!” he waved to them.

They stopped, looked at one another, looked at him.  He went on, they followed him.  Then he stopped and began ruminating.  It was impossible to go to his great-niece Glasha, whom he hardly knew, with these creatures; he did not want to go back and shut them up, and, indeed, he could not shut them up, because the gate was no use.

“To die of hunger in the shed,” thought Zotov.  “Hadn’t I really better take them to Ignat?”

Ignat’s hut stood on the town pasture-ground, a hundred paces from the flagstaff.  Though he had not quite made up his mind, and did not know what to do, he turned towards it.  His head was giddy and there was a darkness before his eyes. . . .

He remembers little of what happened in the slaughterer’s yard.  He has a memory of a sickening, heavy smell of hides and the savoury steam of the cabbage-soup Ignat was sipping when he went in to him.  As in a dream he saw Ignat, who made him wait two hours, slowly preparing something, changing his clothes, talking to some women about corrosive sublimate; he remembered the horse was put into a stand, after which there was the sound of two dull thuds, one of a blow on the skull, the other of the fall of a heavy body.  When Lyska, seeing the death of her friend, flew at Ignat, barking shrilly, there was the sound of a third blow that cut short the bark abruptly.  Further, Zotov remembers that in his drunken foolishness, seeing the two corpses, he went up to the stand, and put his own forehead ready for a blow.