night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold
in the morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney
and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the life
which they would have chosen for themselves and of which they had once
dreamed, and how far away they both were from their contemporaries, who
were at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town without
noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the theatre, or sitting
in their studies over a book. Oh, how much they would have given now
only to stroll along the Nevsky Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow,
to listen to decent singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!

"Oo-oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm in the loft, and something outside slammed
viciously, probably the signboard on the hut. "Oo-oo-oo-oo!"

"You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here," said
Startchenko, getting up. "It's not six yet, it's too early to go to bed;
I am off. Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only a couple of
miles from Syrnya. I shall go to see him and spend the evening there.
Constable, run and tell my coachman not to take the horses out. And what
are you going to do?" he asked Lyzhin.

"I don't know; I expect I shall go to sleep."

The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out. Lyzhin could
hear him talking to the coachman and the bells beginning to quiver on
the frozen horses. He drove off.

"It is not nice for you, sir, to spend the night in here," said the
constable; "come into the other room. It's dirty, but for one night it
won't matter. I'll get a samovar from a peasant and heat it directly.
I'll heap up some hay for you, and then you go to sleep, and God bless
you, your honor."

A little later the examining magistrate was sitting in the kitchen
drinking tea, while Loshadin, the constable, was standing at the door
talking. He was an old man about sixty, short and very thin, bent and
white, with a naive smile on his face and watery eyes, and he kept
smacking with his lips as though he were sucking a sweetmeat. He was
wearing a short sheepskin coat and high felt boots, and held his stick
in his hands all the time. The youth of the examining magistrate aroused
his compassion, and that was probably why he addressed him familiarly.

"The elder gave orders that he was to be informed when the police
superintendent or the examining magistrate came," he said, "so I suppose
I must go now.... It's