next day he thought no
more of the incident with the sturgeon. But, alas! man proposes,
but God disposes. An evil tongue did its evil work, and Ahineev's
strategy was of no avail. Just a week later--to be precise, on
Wednesday after the third lesson--when Ahineev was standing in
the middle of the teacher's room, holding forth on the vicious
propensities of a boy called Visekin, the head master went up to
him and drew him aside:

"Look here, Sergei Kapitonich," said the head master, "you must
excuse me. . . . It's not my business; but all the same I must make
you realize. . . . It's my duty. You see, there are rumors that you
are romancing with that . . . cook. . . . It's nothing to do with
me, but . . . flirt with her, kiss her . . . as you please, but
don't let it be so public, please. I entreat you! Don't forget that
you're a schoolmaster."

Ahineev turned cold and faint. He went home like a man stung by a
whole swarm of bees, like a man scalded with boiling water. As he
walked home, it seemed to him that the whole town was looking at
him as though he were smeared with pitch. At home fresh trouble
awaited him.

"Why aren't you gobbling up your food as usual?" his wife asked him
at dinner. "What are you so pensive about? Brooding over your amours?
Pining for your Marfa? I know all about it, Mohammedan! Kind friends
have opened my eyes! O-o-o! . . . you savage!"

And she slapped him in the face. He got up from the table, not
feeling the earth under his feet, and without his hat or coat, made
his way to Vankin. He found him at home.

"You scoundrel!" he addressed him. "Why have you covered me with
mud before all the town? Why did you set this slander going about
me?"

"What slander? What are you talking about?"

"Who was it gossiped of my kissing Marfa? Wasn't it you? Tell me
that. Wasn't it you, you brigand?"

Vankin blinked and twitched in every fibre of his battered countenance,
raised his eyes to the icon and articulated, "God blast me! Strike
me blind and lay me out, if I said a single word about you! May I
be left without house and home, may I be stricken with worse than
cholera!"

Vankin's sincerity did not admit of doubt. It was evidently not he
who was the author of the slander.

"But who, then, who?" Ahineev wondered, going over all his acquaintances
in his mind and beating himself on the breast. "Who, then?"

Who, then? We, too, ask the reader.

MINDS IN FERMENT

_(FROM THE ANNALS OF A T