ing and raising
his eyebrows. "Very good. Whose dog is it? I won't let this pass!
I'll teach them to let their dogs run all over the place! It's time
these gentry were looked after, if they won't obey the regulations!
When he's fined, the blackguard, I'll teach him what it means to
keep dogs and such stray cattle! I'll give him a lesson! . . .
Yeldyrin," cries the superintendent, addressing the policeman, "find
out whose dog this is and draw up a report! And the dog must be
strangled. Without delay! It's sure to be mad. . . . Whose dog is
it, I ask?"

"I fancy it's General Zhigalov's," says someone in the crowd.

"General Zhigalov's, h'm. . . . Help me off with my coat, Yeldyrin
. . . it's frightfully hot! It must be a sign of rain. . . . There's
one thing I can't make out, how it came to bite you?" Otchumyelov
turns to Hryukin. "Surely it couldn't reach your finger. It's a
little dog, and you are a great hulking fellow! You must have
scratched your finger with a nail, and then the idea struck you to
get damages for it. We all know . . . your sort! I know you devils!"

"He put a cigarette in her face, your honour, for a joke, and she
had the sense to snap at him. . . . He is a nonsensical fellow,
your honour!"

"That's a lie, Squinteye! You didn't see, so why tell lies about
it? His honour is a wise gentleman, and will see who is telling
lies and who is telling the truth, as in God's sight. . . . And if
I am lying let the court decide. It's written in the law. . . . We
are all equal nowadays. My own brother is in the gendarmes . . .
let me tell you. . . ."

"Don't argue!"

"No, that's not the General's dog," says the policeman, with profound
conviction, "the General hasn't got one like that. His are mostly
setters."

"Do you know that for a fact?"

"Yes, your honour."

"I know it, too. The General has valuable dogs, thoroughbred, and
this is goodness knows what! No coat, no shape. . . . A low creature.
And to keep a dog like that! . . . where's the sense of it. If a
dog like that were to turn up in Petersburg or Moscow, do you know
what would happen? They would not worry about the law, they would
strangle it in a twinkling! You've been injured, Hryukin, and we
can't let the matter drop. . . . We must give them a lesson! It is
high time . . . . !"

"Yet maybe it is the General's," says the policeman, thinking aloud.
"It's not written on its face. . . . I saw one like it the other
day in his yard."

"It