whisper
and slowly. He could hear in the prayer-room the waiter say:

"The Tatar at Shtchepovo is selling his business for fifteen hundred.
He'll take five hundred down and an I.O.U. for the rest. And so,
Matvey Vassilitch, be so kind as to lend me that five hundred
roubles. I will pay you two per cent a month."

"What money have I got?" cried Matvey, amazed. "I have no money!"

"Two per cent a month will be a godsend to you," the policeman
explained. "While lying by, your money is simply eaten by the moth,
and that's all that you get from it."

Afterwards the visitors went out and a silence followed. But Yakov
Ivanitch had hardly begun reading and singing again when a voice
was heard outside the door:

"Brother, let me have a horse to drive to Vedenyapino."

It was Matvey. And Yakov was troubled again. "Which can you go
with?" he asked after a moment's thought. "The man has gone with
the sorrel to take the pig, and I am going with the little stallion
to Shuteykino as soon as I have finished."

"Brother, why is it you can dispose of the horses and not I?" Matvey
asked with irritation.

"Because I am not taking them for pleasure, but for work."

"Our property is in common, so the horses are in common, too, and
you ought to understand that, brother."

A silence followed. Yakov did not go on praying, but waited for
Matvey to go away from the door.

"Brother," said Matvey, "I am a sick man. I don't want possession
--let them go; you have them, but give me a small share to keep
me in my illness. Give it me and I'll go away."

Yakov did not speak. He longed to be rid of Matvey, but he could
not give him money, since all the money was in the business; besides,
there had never been a case of the family dividing in the whole
history of the Terehovs. Division means ruin.

Yakov said nothing, but still waited for Matvey to go away, and
kept looking at his sister, afraid that she would interfere, and
that there would be a storm of abuse again, as there had been in
the morning. When at last Matvey did go Yakov went on reading, but
now he had no pleasure in it. There was a heaviness in his head and
a darkness before his eyes from continually bowing down to the
ground, and he was weary of the sound of his soft dejected voice.
When such a depression of spirit came over him at night, he put it
down to not being able to sleep; by day it frightened him, and he
began to feel as though devils were sitting on his head and s