knife. The innkeeper locked the door and
said: 'Say your prayers, travellers, . . . and if you begin screaming,'
they said, 'we won't let you say your prayers before you die. . . .'
As though we could scream! I had such a lump in my throat I could
not cry out. . . . The merchant wept and said: 'Good Christian
people! you have resolved to kill me because my money tempts you.
Well, so be it; I shall not be the first nor shall I be the last.
Many of us merchants have been murdered at inns. But why, good
Christian brothers,' says he, 'murder my driver? Why should he have
to suffer for my money?' And he said that so pitifully! And the
innkeeper answered him: 'If we leave him alive,' said he, 'he will
be the first to bear witness against us. One may just as well kill
two as one. You can but answer once for seven misdeeds. . . Say
your prayers, that's all you can do, and it is no good talking!'
The merchant and I knelt down side by side and wept and said our
prayers. He thought of his children. I was young in those days; I
wanted to live. . . . We looked at the images and prayed, and so
pitifully that it brings a tear even now. . . . And the innkeeper's
wife looks at us and says: 'Good people,' said she, 'don't bear a
grudge against us in the other world and pray to God for our
punishment, for it is want that drives us to it.' We prayed and
wept and prayed and wept, and God heard us. He had pity on us, I
suppose. . . . At the very minute when the innkeeper had taken the
merchant by the beard to rip open his throat with his knife suddenly
someone seemed to tap at the window from the yard! We all started,
and the innkeeper's hands dropped. . . . Someone was tapping at the
window and shouting: 'Pyotr Grigoritch,' he shouted, 'are you here?
Get ready and let's go!' The people saw that someone had come for
the merchant; they were terrified and took to their heels. . . .
And we made haste into the yard, harnessed the horses, and were out
of sight in a minute. . ."

"Who was it knocked at the window?" asked Dymov.

"At the window? It must have been a holy saint or angel, for there
was no one else. . . . When we drove out of the yard there wasn't
a soul in the street. . . . It was the Lord's doing."

Panteley told other stories, and in all of them "long knives" figured
and all alike sounded made up. Had he heard these stories from
someone else, or had he made them up himself in the remote past,
and afterwards, as his memory grew