hand on the floor. Death must have been instantaneous. After a careful
look round, Pyotr Stepanovitch got up and went out on tiptoe, closed the
door, left the candle on the table in the outer room, thought a moment,
and resolved not to put it out, reflecting that it could not possibly
set fire to anything. Looking once more at the document left on the
table, he smiled mechanically and then went out of the house, still for
some reason walking on tiptoe. He crept through Fedka's hole again and
carefully replaced the posts after him.

III

Precisely at ten minutes to six Pyotr Stepanovitch and Erkel were
walking up and down the platform at the railway-station beside a rather
long train. Pyotr Stepanovitch was setting off and Erkel was saying
good-bye to him. The luggage was in, and his bag was in the seat he had
taken in a second-class carriage. The first bell had rung already; they
were waiting for the second. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked about him, openly
watching the passengers as they got into the train. But he did not meet
anyone he knew well; only twice he nodded to acquaintances--a merchant
whom he knew slightly, and then a young village priest who was going
to his parish two stations away. Erkel evidently wanted to speak of
something of importance in the last moments, though possibly he did not
himself know exactly of what, but he could not bring himself to begin!
He kept fancying that Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed anxious to get rid of
him and was impatient for the last bell.

"You look at every one so openly," he observed with some timidity, as
though he would have warned him.

"Why not? It would not do for me to conceal myself at present. It's too
soon. Don't be uneasy. All I am afraid of is that the devil might send
Liputin this way; he might scent me out and race off here."

"Pyotr Stepanovitch, they are not to be trusted," Erkel brought out
resolutely.

"Liputin?"

"None of them, Pyotr Stepanovitch."

"Nonsense! they are all bound by what happened yesterday. There isn't
one who would turn traitor. People won't go to certain destruction
unless they've lost their reason."

"Pyotr Stepanovitch, but they will lose their reason." Evidently that
idea had already occurred to Pyotr Stepanovitch too, and so Erkel's
observation irritated him the more.

"You are not in a funk too, are you, Erkel? I rely on you more than on
any of them. I've seen now what each of them is worth. Tell them to-day
all I've told you.