t deal of time over cards, drank to excess, married
heiresses, and undoubtedly had a pernicious corrupting influence
on those around them. It was only the girls who had still the fresh
fragrance of moral purity; most of them had higher impulses, pure
and honest hearts; but they had no understanding of life, and
believed that bribes were given out of respect for moral qualities,
and after they were married grew old quickly, let themselves go
completely, and sank hopelessly in the mire of vulgar, petty bourgeois
existence.

III

A railway-line was being constructed in our neighbourhood. On the
eve of feast days the streets were thronged with ragged fellows
whom the townspeople called "navvies," and of whom they were afraid.
And more than once I had seen one of these tatterdemalions with a
bloodstained countenance being led to the police station, while a
samovar or some linen, wet from the wash, was carried behind by way
of material evidence. The navvies usually congregated about the
taverns and the market-place; they drank, ate, and used bad language,
and pursued with shrill whistles every woman of light behaviour who
passed by. To entertain this hungry rabble our shopkeepers made
cats and dogs drunk with vodka, or tied an old kerosene can to a
dog's tail; a hue and cry was raised, and the dog dashed along the
street, jingling the can, squealing with terror; it fancied some
monster was close upon its heels; it would run far out of the town
into the open country and there sink exhausted. There were in the
town several dogs who went about trembling with their tails between
their legs; and people said this diversion had been too much for
them, and had driven them mad.

A station was being built four miles from the town. It was said
that the engineers asked for a bribe of fifty thousand roubles for
bringing the line right up to the town, but the town council would
only consent to give forty thousand; they could not come to an
agreement over the difference, and now the townspeople regretted
it, as they had to make a road to the station and that, it was
reckoned, would cost more. The sleepers and rails had been laid
throughout the whole length of the line, and trains ran up and down
it, bringing building materials and labourers, and further progress
was only delayed on account of the bridges which Dolzhikov was
building, and some of the stations were not yet finished.

Dubetchnya, as our first station was called, was a li