rain, but
I am going second class."

"Nonsense, that's no matter. Get in with us. I'll tell them directly to
move you to the first class. The chief guard would do anything I tell
him. What have you got?... a bag? a rug?"

"First-rate. Come along!"

Pyotr Stepanovitch took his bag, his rug, and his book, and at once and
with alacrity transferred himself to the first class. Erkel helped him.
The third bell rang.

"Well, Erkel." Hurriedly, and with a preoccupied air, Pyotr Stepanovitch
held out his hand from the window for the last time. "You see, I am
sitting down to cards with them."

"Why explain, Pyotr Stepanovitch? I understand, I understand it all!"

"Well, au revoir," Pyotr Stepanovitch turned away suddenly on his
name being called by the young man, who wanted to introduce him to his
partners. And Erkel saw nothing more of Pyotr Stepanovitch.

He returned home very sad. Not that he was alarmed at Pyotr
Stepanovitch's leaving them so suddenly, but... he had turned away from
him so quickly when that young swell had called to him and... he might
have said something different to him, not "Au revoir," or... or at
least have pressed his hand more warmly. That last was bitterest of all.
Something else was beginning to gnaw in his poor little heart, something
which he could not understand himself yet, something connected with the
evening before.

CHAPTER VII. STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING

I am persuaded that Stepan Trofimovitch was terribly frightened as
he felt the time fixed for his insane enterprise drawing near. I am
convinced that he suffered dreadfully from terror, especially on the
night before he started--that awful night. Nastasya mentioned afterwards
that he had gone to bed late and fallen asleep. But that proves nothing;
men sentenced to death sleep very soundly, they say, even the night
before their execution. Though he set off by daylight, when a nervous
man is always a little more confident (and the major, Virginsky's
relative, used to give up believing in God every morning when the night
was over), yet I am convinced he could never, without horror, have
imagined himself alone on the high road in such a position. No doubt
a certain desperation in his feelings softened at first the terrible
sensation of sudden solitude in which he at once found himself as soon
as he had left Nastasya, and the corner in which he had been warm and
snug for twenty years. But it made no difference; even wit