--how does your honor expect me to
pay attention to other people's affairs? And the morning that I read
about it in the paper, why, I stood there with my mouth wide open, and
I said, 'Well, that was the way it was bound to end!'"

"Why did you say, 'That was the way it was bound to end'?"

"Why--because it had ended that way! You see--on the instant, I called
to mind the ugly face of the husband. Every time I saw him pass up or
down the street--one of those impressions that no one can account
for--I used to think, 'That fellow has the face of a convict!' But of
course that proves nothing. There are plenty who have the bad luck to
be uglier than mortal sin, but very worthy people all the same. But in
this case I didn't think that I was mistaken."

"But you were friends. He used to come very often and sit down at the
entrance to your barber shop."

"Very often? Only once in a while, your honor! 'By your leave,
neighbor,' he would say. He always called me 'neighbor'; that was his
name for everyone. And I would say, 'Why, certainly.' The chair stood
there, empty. Your honor understands that I could hardly be so uncivil
as to say to him, 'No, you can't sit down.' A barber shop is a public
place, like a cafe or a beer saloon. At all events, one may sit down
without paying for it, and no need to have a shave or hair-cut, either!
'By your leave, neighbor,' and there he would sit, in silence, smoking
and scowling, with his eyes half shut. He would loaf there for half an
hour, an hour, sometimes longer. He annoyed me, I don't deny it, from
the very start. There was a good deal of talk."

"What sort of talk?"

"A good deal of talk. Your honor knows, better than I, how evil-minded
people are. I make it a practice not to believe a syllable of what I am
told about anyone, good or evil; that is the way to keep out of
trouble."

"Come, come, what sort of talk? Keep to the point."

"What sort of talk? Why, one day they would say this, and the next day
they would say that, and by harping on it long enough, they made
themselves believe that the wife--Well, your honor knows that a pretty
wife is a chastisement of God. And after all, there are some things
that you can't help seeing unless you won't see!"

"Then it was he, the husband--"

"I know nothing about it, your honor, nothing at all! But it is quite
true that every time he came and sat down by my doorway or inside the
shop, I used to say to myself, 'If that man can't see,