wo horses, your honor, three cows, I
used to keep twenty head of sheep; but the time has come, and I am
left with nothing but a wretched bag, and even that is not mine but
Government property. And now in our Nedoshtchotova, if the truth is to
be told, my house is the worst of the lot. Makey had four footmen, and
now Makey is a footman himself. Petrak had four laborers, and now Petrak
is a laborer himself."

"How was it you became poor?" asked the examining magistrate.

"My sons drink terribly. I could not tell you how they drink, you
wouldn't believe it."

Lyzhin listened and thought how he, Lyzhin, would go back sooner or
later to Moscow, while this old man would stay here for ever, and would
always be walking and walking. And how many times in his life he would
come across such battered, unkempt old men, not "men of any worth," in
whose souls fifteen kopecks, glasses of vodka, and a profound belief
that you can't get on in this life by dishonesty, were equally firmly
rooted.

Then he grew tired of listening, and told the old man to bring him some
hay for his bed, There was an iron bedstead with a pillow and a quilt in
the traveler's room, and it could be fetched in; but the dead man had
been lying by it for nearly three days (and perhaps sitting on it just
before his death), and it would be disagreeable to sleep upon it
now....

"It's only half-past seven," thought Lyzhin, glancing at his watch. "How
awful it is!"

He was not sleepy, but having nothing to do to pass away the time,
he lay down and covered himself with a rug. Loshadin went in and out
several times, clearing away the tea-things; smacking his lips and
sighing, he kept tramping round the table; at last he took his little
lamp and went out, and, looking at his long, gray-headed, bent figure
from behind, Lyzhin thought:

"Just like a magician in an opera."

It was dark. The moon must have been behind the clouds, as the windows
and the snow on the window-frames could be seen distinctly.

"Oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm, "Oo-oo-oo-oo!"

"Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!" wailed a woman in the loft, or it sounded like it.
"Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!"

"B-booh!" something outside banged against the wall. "Trah!"

The examining magistrate listened: there was no woman up there, it was
the wind howling. It was rather cold, and he put his fur coat over his
rug. As he got warm he thought how remote all this--the storm, and the
hut, and the old man, and the dead body lying in th