heir pride. And I'll help Father Avraamy too. . . ."

He reckoned his money on his fingers, and was afraid to own to
himself that those two hundred roubles would hardly be enough for
him to pay his steward, his servants, the peasant who brought the
meat. . . . He could not help remembering the recent past when he
was senselessly squandering his father's fortune, when as a puppy
of twenty he had given expensive fans to prostitutes, had paid ten
roubles a day to Kuzma, his cab-driver, and in his vanity had made
presents to actresses. Oh, how useful those wasted rouble, three-rouble,
ten-rouble notes would have been now!

"Father Avraamy lives on three roubles a month!" thought Kunin.
"For a rouble the priest's wife could get herself a chemise, and
the doctor's wife could hire a washerwoman. But I'll help them,
anyway! I must help them."

Here Kunin suddenly recalled the private information he had sent
to the bishop, and he writhed as from a sudden draught of cold air.
This remembrance filled him with overwhelming shame before his inner
self and before the unseen truth.

So had begun and had ended a sincere effort to be of public service
on the part of a well-intentioned but unreflecting and over-comfortable
person.

THE MURDER

I

The evening service was being celebrated at Progonnaya Station.
Before the great ikon, painted in glaring colours on a background
of gold, stood the crowd of railway servants with their wives and
children, and also of the timbermen and sawyers who worked close
to the railway line. All stood in silence, fascinated by the glare
of the lights and the howling of the snow-storm which was aimlessly
disporting itself outside, regardless of the fact that it was the
Eve of the Annunciation. The old priest from Vedenyapino conducted
the service; the sacristan and Matvey Terehov were singing.

Matvey's face was beaming with delight; he sang stretching out his
neck as though he wanted to soar upwards. He sang tenor and chanted
the "Praises" too in a tenor voice with honied sweetness and
persuasiveness. When he sang "Archangel Voices" he waved his arms
like a conductor, and trying to second the sacristan's hollow bass
with his tenor, achieved something extremely complex, and from his
face it could be seen that he was experiencing great pleasure.

At last the service was over, and they all quietly dispersed, and
it was dark and empty again, and there followed that hush which is
only known in st