nearly three miles to the _volost_, and the
storm, the snowdrifts, are something terrible--maybe one won't get there
before midnight. Ough! how the wind roars!"

"I don't need the elder," said Lyzhin. "There is nothing for him to do
here."

He looked at the old man with curiosity, and asked:

"Tell me, grandfather, how many years have you been constable?"

"How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Freedom I began going
as constable, that's how I reckon it. And from that time I have been
going every day since. Other people have holidays, but I am always
going. When it's Easter and the church bells are ringing and Christ has
risen, I still go about with my bag--to the treasury, to the post, to
the police superintendent's lodgings, to the rural captain, to the tax
inspector, to the municipal office, to the gentry, to the peasants, to
all orthodox Christians. I carry parcels, notices, tax papers, letters,
forms of different sorts, circulars, and to be sure, kind gentleman,
there are all sorts of forms nowadays, so as to note down the
numbers--yellow, white, and red--and every gentleman or priest or
well-to-do peasant must write down a dozen times in the year how much
he has sown and harvested, how many quarters or poods he has of rye, how
many of oats, how many of hay, and what the weather's like, you know,
and insects, too, of all sorts. To be sure you can write what you like,
it's only a regulation, but one must go and give out the notices and
then go again and collect them. Here, for instance, there's no need to
cut open the gentleman; you know yourself it's a silly thing, it's only
dirtying your hands, and here you have been put to trouble, your honor;
you have come because it's the regulation; you can't help it. For thirty
years I have been going round according to regulation. In the summer
it is all right, it is warm and dry; but in winter and autumn it's
uncomfortable At times I have been almost drowned and almost frozen; all
sorts of things have happened--wicked people set on me in the forest and
took away my bag; I have been beaten, and I have been before a court of
law."

"What were you accused of?"

"Of fraud."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, you see, Hrisanf Grigoryev, the clerk, sold the contractor some
boards belonging to someone else--cheated him, in fact. I was mixed up
in it. They sent me to the tavern for vodka; well, the clerk did not
share with me--did not even offer me a glass; but as thr