What are you crying for? You've lived your life, and thank
God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it--that's enough for
you!..."

"I am grieving.... Graciously forgive me! If I could have another
five or six years!..."

"What for?"

"The horse isn't mine, I must give it back.... I must bury my old
woman.... How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honor,
Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I'll turn you
croquet balls...."

The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over
with the turner.

ON OFFICIAL DUTY

THE deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were going to an
inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they were overtaken by a
snowstorm; they spent a long time going round and round, and arrived,
not at midday, as they had intended, but in the evening when it was
dark. They put up for the night at the Zemstvo hut. It so happened
that it was in this hut that the dead body was lying--the corpse of the
Zemstvo insurance agent, Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three days
before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot himself, to the
great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life
so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the
table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that
it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary.

In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow
off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And meanwhile the old
village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp.
There was a strong smell of paraffin.

"Who are you?" asked the doctor.

"Conshtable,..." answered the constable.

He used to spell it "conshtable" when he signed the receipts at the post
office.

"And where are the witnesses?"

"They must have gone to tea, your honor."

On the right was the parlor, the travelers' or gentry's room; on the
left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves under the
rafters. The doctor and the examining magistrate, followed by the
constable, holding the lamp high above his head, went into the parlor.
Here a still, long body covered with white linen was lying on the floor
close to the table-legs. In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly
see, besides the white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything
about it was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silenc