r a minute at
Father Aristark with eyes full of tears, then turns her caressing,
reverent gaze on the drug chest, the books, the bills, the armchair
in which the man she had saved from death has just been sitting,
and her eyes fall on the paper just dropped by her patient. She
picks up the paper, unfolds it, and sees in it three pilules--the
very pilules she had given Zamuhrishen the previous Tuesday.

"They are the very ones," she thinks puzzled. ". . . The paper is
the same. . . . He hasn't even unwrapped them! What has he taken
then? Strange. . . . Surely he wouldn't try to deceive me!"

And for the first time in her ten years of practice a doubt creeps
into Marfa Petrovna's mind. . . . She summons the other patients,
and while talking to them of their complaints notices what has
hitherto slipped by her ears unnoticed. The patients, every one of
them as though they were in a conspiracy, first belaud her for their
miraculous cure, go into raptures over her medical skill, and abuse
allopath doctors, then when she is flushed with excitement, begin
holding forth on their needs. One asks for a bit of land to plough,
another for wood, a third for permission to shoot in her forests,
and so on. She looks at the broad, benevolent countenance of Father
Aristark who has revealed the truth to her, and a new truth begins
gnawing at her heart. An evil oppressive truth. . . .

The deceitfulness of man!

IN THE GRAVEYARD

"THE wind has got up, friends, and it is beginning to get dark.
Hadn't we better take ourselves off before it gets worse?"

The wind was frolicking among the yellow leaves of the old birch
trees, and a shower of thick drops fell upon us from the leaves.
One of our party slipped on the clayey soil, and clutched at a big
grey cross to save himself from falling.

"Yegor Gryaznorukov, titular councillor and cavalier . ." he read.
"I knew that gentleman. He was fond of his wife, he wore the Stanislav
ribbon, and read nothing. . . . His digestion worked well . . . .
life was all right, wasn't it? One would have thought he had no
reason to die, but alas! fate had its eye on him. . . . The poor
fellow fell a victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion,
when he was listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head
from the door that he sustained concussion of the brain (he had a
brain), and died. And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who
from his cradle detested verses and epigrams. . . . As th