ular, the three windows
which faced upon the courtyard had iron bars to them. Lastly, there
were posted, sentinel-like on the entrance-steps, two water-butts as a
precaution against fire.

"What think you of the place?" Gubin muttered as he peered into the
well. "Isn't it a barbarous hole? The right thing would be to pull it
down wholesale, and then rebuild it on larger and less restricted
lines. Yet these fools merely go tacking new additions on to the old."

For awhile his lips moved as in an incantation. Then he frowned,
glanced shrewdly at the structures in question, and continued softly:

"I may say in passing that the place is MINE."

"YOURS?"

"Yes, mine. At all events, so it used to be."

And he pulled a grimace as though he had got the toothache before
adding with an air of command:

"Come! I will pump out the water, and YOU shall carry it to the
entrance-steps and fill the water-butts. Here is a pail, and here a
ladder."

Whereafter, with a considerable display of strength, he set about his
portion of the task, whilst I myself took pail in hand and advanced
towards the steps to find that the water-butts were so rotten that,
instead of retaining the water, they let it leak out into the
courtyard. Gubin said with an oath:

"Fine masters these--masters who grudge one a groat, and squander a
rouble! What if a fire WERE to break out? Oh, the blockheads!"

Presently, the proprietors in person issued into the courtyard--the
stout, bald Peter Birkin, a man whose face was flushed even to the
whites of his shifty eyes, and, close behind him, eke his shadow, Jonah
Birkin--a person of sandy, sullen mien, and overhanging brows, and
dull, heavy eyes.

"Good day, dear sir," said Peter Birkin thinly, as with a puffy hand he
raised from his head a cloth cap, while Jonah nodded. And then, with a
sidelong glance at myself, asked in a deep bass voice:

"Who is this young man?"

Large and important like peacocks, the pair then shuffled across the
wet yard, and in so doing, went to much trouble to avoid soiling their
polished shoes. Next Peter said to his brother:

"Have you noticed that the water-butts are rotted? Oh, that fine
Yakinika! He ought long ago to have been dismissed."

"Who is that young man over there?" Jonah repeated with an air of
asperity.

"The son of his father and mother," Gubin replied quietly, and without
so much as a glance at the brothers.

"Well, come along," snuffled Peter with a dra