eed, he returned by the way he had come.

Neither the next day, when the alarm was raised, nor at any time after in
his life, did any one dream of suspecting that he was the criminal. No one
indeed knew of his love for her, for he was always reserved and silent and
had no friend to whom he would have opened his heart. He was looked upon
simply as an acquaintance, and not a very intimate one, of the murdered
woman, as for the previous fortnight he had not even visited her. A serf
of hers called Pyotr was at once suspected, and every circumstance
confirmed the suspicion. The man knew--indeed his mistress did not conceal
the fact--that having to send one of her serfs as a recruit she had decided
to send him, as he had no relations and his conduct was unsatisfactory.
People had heard him angrily threatening to murder her when he was drunk
in a tavern. Two days before her death, he had run away, staying no one
knew where in the town. The day after the murder, he was found on the road
leading out of the town, dead drunk, with a knife in his pocket, and his
right hand happened to be stained with blood. He declared that his nose
had been bleeding, but no one believed him. The maids confessed that they
had gone to a party and that the street-door had been left open till they
returned. And a number of similar details came to light, throwing
suspicion on the innocent servant.

They arrested him, and he was tried for the murder; but a week after the
arrest, the prisoner fell sick of a fever and died unconscious in the
hospital. There the matter ended and the judges and the authorities and
every one in the town remained convinced that the crime had been committed
by no one but the servant who had died in the hospital. And after that the
punishment began.

My mysterious visitor, now my friend, told me that at first he was not in
the least troubled by pangs of conscience. He was miserable a long time,
but not for that reason; only from regret that he had killed the woman he
loved, that she was no more, that in killing her he had killed his love,
while the fire of passion was still in his veins. But of the innocent
blood he had shed, of the murder of a fellow creature, he scarcely
thought. The thought that his victim might have become the wife of another
man was insupportable to him, and so, for a long time, he was convinced in
his conscience that he could not have acted otherwise.

At first he was worried at the arrest of the servan