eady half an hour, an hour, and he was
miserably sick of it: was it really possible to live here a day, a
week, and even years like these people? Why, he had been sitting
here, had walked about and sat down again; he could get up and look
out of window and walk from corner to corner again, and then what?
Sit so all the time, like a post, and think? No, that was scarcely
possible.

Andrey Yefimitch lay down, but at once got up, wiped the cold sweat
from his brow with his sleeve and felt that his whole face smelt
of smoked fish. He walked about again.

"It's some misunderstanding . . ." he said, turning out the palms
of his hands in perplexity. "It must be cleared up. There is a
misunderstanding."

Meanwhile Ivan Dmitritch woke up; he sat up and propped his cheeks
on his fists. He spat. Then he glanced lazily at the doctor, and
apparently for the first minute did not understand; but soon his
sleepy face grew malicious and mocking.

"Aha! so they have put you in here, too, old fellow?" he said in a
voice husky from sleepiness, screwing up one eye. "Very glad to see
you. You sucked the blood of others, and now they will suck yours.
Excellent!"

"It's a misunderstanding . . ." Andrey Yefimitch brought out,
frightened by Ivan Dmitritch's words; he shrugged his shoulders and
repeated: "It's some misunderstanding."

Ivan Dmitritch spat again and lay down.

"Cursed life," he grumbled, "and what's bitter and insulting, this
life will not end in compensation for our sufferings, it will not
end with apotheosis as it would in an opera, but with death; peasants
will come and drag one's dead body by the arms and the legs to the
cellar. Ugh! Well, it does not matter. . . . We shall have our good
time in the other world. . . . I shall come here as a ghost from
the other world and frighten these reptiles. I'll turn their hair
grey."

Moiseika returned, and, seeing the doctor, held out his hand.

"Give me one little kopeck," he said.

XVIII

Andrey Yefimitch walked away to the window and looked out into the
open country. It was getting dark, and on the horizon to the right
a cold crimson moon was mounting upwards. Not far from the hospital
fence, not much more than two hundred yards away, stood a tall white
house shut in by a stone wall. This was the prison.

"So this is real life," thought Andrey Yefimitch, and he felt
frightened.

The moon and the prison, and the nails on the fence, and the far-away
flames at the bon