my visiting card."

"What do I want with your card?" says someone in a husky bass.
"You've disturbed all my fowls, you've smashed the eggs! Look what
you've done. The turkey poults were to have come out to-day or
to-morrow, and you've smashed them. What's the use of your giving
me your card, sir?"

"How dare you interfere with me! No! I won't have it!"

"I am thirsty," thinks Laev, trying to open his eyes, and he feels
somebody climb down from the window over his head.

"My name is Kozyavkin! I have a cottage here. Everyone knows me."

"We don't know anyone called Kozyavkin."

"What are you saying? Call the elder. He knows me."

"Don't get excited, the constable will be here directly. . . . We
know all the summer visitors here, but I've never seen you in my
life."

"I've had a cottage in Rottendale for five years."

"Whew! Do you take this for the Dale? This is Sicklystead, but
Rottendale is farther to the right, beyond the match factory. It's
three miles from here."

"Bless my soul! Then I've taken the wrong turning!"

The cries of men and fowls mingle with the barking of dogs, and the
voice of Kozyavkin rises above the chaos of confused sounds:

"You shut up! I'll pay. I'll show you whom you have to deal with!"

Little by little the voices die down. Laev feels himself being
shaken by the shoulder. . . .

AN AVENGER

SHORTLY after finding his wife _in flagrante delicto_ Fyodor
Fyodorovitch Sigaev was standing in Schmuck and Co.'s, the gunsmiths,
selecting a suitable revolver. His countenance expressed wrath,
grief, and unalterable determination.

"I know what I must do," he was thinking. "The sanctities of the
home are outraged, honour is trampled in the mud, vice is triumphant,
and therefore as a citizen and a man of honour I must be their
avenger. First, I will kill her and her lover and then myself."

He had not yet chosen a revolver or killed anyone, but already in
imagination he saw three bloodstained corpses, broken skulls, brains
oozing from them, the commotion, the crowd of gaping spectators,
the post-mortem. . . . With the malignant joy of an insulted man
he pictured the horror of the relations and the public, the agony
of the traitress, and was mentally reading leading articles on the
destruction of the traditions of the home.

The shopman, a sprightly little Frenchified figure with rounded
belly and white waistcoat, displayed the revolvers, and smiling
respectfully and scraping with