d furiously, and he struck his
fist on his hip. "He's run off, the sneak!"

He sank into agitated reflection. Erkel looked intently at him and
waited in silence.

"But how will you take it? You can't simply pick it up in your hands and
carry it."

"There will be no need to. You'll simply point out the place and we'll
just make sure that it really is buried there. We only know whereabouts
the place is, we don't know the place itself. And have you pointed the
place out to anyone else yet?"

Shatov looked at him.

"You, you, a chit of a boy like you, a silly boy like you, you too have
got caught in that net like a sheep? Yes, that's just the young blood
they want! Well, go along. E-ech! that scoundrel's taken you all in and
run away."

Erkel looked at him serenely and calmly but did not seem to understand.

"Verhovensky, Verhovensky has run away!" Shatov growled fiercely.

"But he is still here, he is not gone away. He is not going till
to-morrow," Erkel observed softly and persuasively. "I particularly
begged him to be present as a witness; my instructions all referred to
him (he explained frankly like a young and inexperienced boy). But I
regret to say he did not agree on the ground of his departure, and he
really is in a hurry."

Shatov glanced compassionately at the simple youth again, but suddenly
gave a gesture of despair as though he thought "they are not worth
pitying."

"All right, I'll come," he cut him short. "And now get away, be off."

"So I'll come for you at six o'clock punctually." Erkel made a courteous
bow and walked deliberately downstairs.

"Little fool!" Shatov could not help shouting after him from the top.

"What is it?" responded the lad from the bottom.

"Nothing, you can go."

"I thought you said something."

II

Erkel was a "little fool" who was only lacking in the higher form
of reason, the ruling power of the intellect; but of the lesser, the
subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty--even to the point of
cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to "the cause" or rather in
reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted on the instructions given to him
when at the meeting of the quintet they had agreed and had distributed
the various duties for the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him
the job of messenger, he succeeded in talking to him aside for ten
minutes.

A craving for active service was characteristic of this shallow,
unreflecting nature, which was for ever year