prevail the sooner, and consequently
release them quicker.

From all that occurred at the trial and his knowledge of Maslova,
Nekhludoff was convinced that she was innocent, and at first was
confident that the other jurors would so find her, but when he saw
that because of the merchant's bungling defense of Maslova, evidently
prompted by his undisguised liking for her, and the foreman's
resistance which it caused, but chiefly because of the weariness of
the jury, there was likely to be a verdict of guilty, he wished to
make objection, but feared to speak in her favor lest his relations
toward her should be disclosed. At the same time he felt that he could
not let things go on without making his objections. He blushed and
grew pale in turn, and was about to speak, when Peter Gerasimovich,
heretofore silent, evidently exasperated by the authoritative manner
of the foreman, suddenly began to make the very objections Nekhludoff
intended to make.

"Permit me to say a few words," he began. "You say that she stole the
money because she had the key; but the servants could have opened the
trunk with a false key after she was gone."

"Of course, of course," the merchant came to his support.

"She could not have taken the money because she would have nowhere to
hide it."

"That is what I said," the merchant encouraged him.

"It is more likely that her coming to the hotel for the money
suggested to the servants the idea of stealing it; that they stole it
and then threw it all upon her."

Peter Gerasimovich spoke provokingly, which communicated itself to the
foreman. As a result the latter began to defend his position more
persistently. But Peter Gerasimovich spoke so convincingly that he won
over the majority, and it was finally decided that she was not guilty
of the theft. When, however, they began to discuss the part she had
taken in the poisoning, her warm supporter, the merchant, argued that
this charge must also be dismissed, as she had no motive for poisoning
him. The foreman insisted that she could not be declared innocent on
that charge, because she herself confessed to giving him the powder.

"But she thought that it was opium," said the merchant.

"She could have killed him even with the opium," retorted the colonel,
who liked to make digressions, and he began to relate the case of his
brother-in-law's wife, who had been poisoned by opium and would have
died had not antidotes promptly been administered by a phy