a fable to learn by
heart, a Latin translation, and a problem. How is a little fellow to
do all that?"

And she spoke of the teacher and the lessons and the text-books,
repeating exactly what Sasha said about them.

At three o'clock they had dinner. In the evening they prepared the
lessons together, and Olenka wept with Sasha over the difficulties.
When she put him to bed, she lingered a long time making the sign of
the cross over him and muttering a prayer. And when she lay in bed,
she dreamed of the far-away, misty future when Sasha would finish his
studies and become a doctor or an engineer, have a large house of his
own, with horses and a carriage, marry and have children. She would
fall asleep still thinking of the same things, and tears would roll
down her cheeks from her closed eyes. And the black cat would lie at
her side purring: "Mrr, mrr, mrr."

Suddenly there was a loud knocking at the gate. Olenka woke up
breathless with fright, her heart beating violently. Half a minute
later there was another knock.

"A telegram from Kharkov," she thought, her whole body in a tremble.
"His mother wants Sasha to come to her in Kharkov. Oh, great God!"

She was in despair. Her head, her feet, her hands turned cold. There
was no unhappier creature in the world, she felt. But another minute
passed, she heard voices. It was the veterinarian coming home from the
club.

"Thank God," she thought. The load gradually fell from her heart, she
was at ease again. And she went back to bed, thinking of Sasha who lay
fast asleep in the next room and sometimes cried out in his sleep:

"I'll give it to you! Get away! Quit your scrapping!"

THE BET

BY ANTON P. CHEKHOV

I

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to
corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the
autumn fifteen years before. There were many clever people at the
party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other
things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few
scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital
punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted
to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital
punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.

"I don't agree with you," said the host. "I myself have experienced
neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge
_a priori_,