When I woke up in the morning my tutor’s bed was empty.  To my question where he was nurse told me in a whisper that he had been taken off early in the morning to the hospital, as his arm was broken.  Distressed at this intelligence and remembering the scene of the previous evening, I went out of doors.  It was a grey day.  The sky was covered with storm-clouds and there was a wind blowing dust, bits of paper, and feathers along the ground....  It felt as though rain were coming.  There was a look of boredom in the servants and in the animals.  When I went into the house I was told not to make such a noise with my feet, as mother was ill and in bed with a migraine.  What was I to do?  I went outside the gate, sat down on the little bench there, and fell to trying to discover the meaning of what I had seen and heard the day before.  From our gate there was a road which, passing the forge and the pool which never dried up, ran into the main road.  I looked at the telegraph-posts, about which clouds of dust were whirling, and at the sleepy birds sitting on the wires, and I suddenly felt so dreary that I began to cry.

A dusty wagonette crammed full of townspeople, probably going to visit the shrine, drove by along the main road.  The wagonette was hardly out of sight when a light chaise with a pair of horses came into view.  In it was Akim Nikititch, the police inspector, standing up and holding on to the coachman’s belt.  To my great surprise, the chaise turned into our road and flew by me in at the gate.  While I was puzzling why the police inspector had come to see us, I heard a noise, and a carriage with three horses came into sight on the road.  In the carriage stood the police captain, directing his coachman towards our gate.

“And why is he coming?” I thought, looking at the dusty police captain.  “Most probably Pobyedimsky has complained of Fyodor to him, and they have come to take him to prison.”

But the mystery was not so easily solved.  The police inspector and the police captain were only the first instalment, for five minutes had scarcely passed when a coach drove in at our gate.  It dashed by me so swiftly that I could only get a glimpse of a red beard.

Lost in conjecture and full of misgivings, I ran to the house.  In the passage first of all I saw mother; she was pale and looking with horror towards the door, from which came the sounds of men’s voices.  The visitors had taken her by surprise in the very throes of migraine.

“Who has come, mother?” I asked.

“Sister,” I heard my uncle’s voice, “will you send in something to eat for the governor and me?”

“It is easy to say ‘something to eat,’” whispered my mother, numb with horror.  “What have I time to get ready now?  I am put to shame in my old age!”