ys, 'It is not my business!' Whose business is it, then?
But there is no one above you here in the hospital; you do what you
like, your honour."

"You simpleton," sighed the doctor, "once the jury have found him
guilty, not the governor, not even the minister, could do anything,
let alone the police captain. It's no good your trying to do
anything!"

"And who judged him, then?"

"The gentlemen of the jury. . . ."

"They weren't gentlemen, they were our peasants! Andrey Guryev was
one; Aloshka Huk was one."

"Well, I am cold talking to you. . . ."

The doctor waved his hand and walked quickly to his own door. Kirila
was on the point of following him, but, seeing the door slam, he
stopped.

For ten minutes he stood motionless in the middle of the hospital
yard, and without putting on his cap stared at the doctor's house,
then he heaved a deep sigh, slowly scratched himself, and walked
towards the gate.

"To whom am I to go?" he muttered as he came out on to the road.
"One says it is not his business, another says it is not his business.
Whose business is it, then? No, till you grease their hands you
will get nothing out of them. The doctor says that, but he keeps
looking all the while at my fist to see whether I am going to give
him a blue note. Well, brother, I'll go, if it has to be to the
governor."

Shifting from one foot to the other and continually looking round
him in an objectless way, he trudged lazily along the road and was
apparently wondering where to go. . . . It was not cold and the
snow faintly crunched under his feet. Not more than half a mile in
front of him the wretched little district town in which his brother
had just been tried lay outstretched on the hill. On the right was
the dark prison with its red roof and sentry-boxes at the corners;
on the left was the big town copse, now covered with hoar-frost.
It was still; only an old man, wearing a woman's short jacket and
a huge cap, was walking ahead, coughing and shouting to a cow which
he was driving to the town.

"Good-day, grandfather," said Kirila, overtaking him.

"Good-day. . . ."

"Are you driving it to the market?"

"No," the old man answered lazily.

"Are you a townsman?"

They got into conversation; Kirila told him what he had come to the
hospital for, and what he had been talking about to the doctor.

"The doctor does not know anything about such matters, that is a
sure thing," the old man said to him as they were both