familiarity. All that was to be seen was a serious,
business-like man, who had indeed been gratuitously insulted, but who
was capable of overlooking an insult.

"But when the Lord led me there," he went on, "ech, I thought what a
heavenly abundance! It was all owing to my helpless state, as in our
way of life there's no doing without assistance. And, now, God be my
witness, sir, it was my own loss. The Lord punished me for my sins, and
what with the censer and the deacon's halter, I only got twelve roubles
altogether. The chin setting of St. Nikolay of pure silver went for next
to nothing. They said it was plated."

"You killed the watchman?"

"That is, I cleared the place out together with that watchman, but
afterwards, next morning, by the river, we fell to quarrelling which
should carry the sack. I sinned, I did lighten his load for him."

"Well, you can rob and murder again."

"That's the very advice Pyotr Stepanovitch gives me, in the very
same words, for he's uncommonly mean and hard-hearted about helping a
fellow-creature. And what's more, he hasn't a ha'p'orth of belief in the
Heavenly Creator, who made us out of earthly clay; but he says it's all
the work of nature even to the last beast. He doesn't understand either
that with our way of life it's impossible for us to get along without
friendly assistance. If you begin to talk to him he looks like a
sheep at the water; it makes one wonder. Would you believe, at Captain
Lebyadkin's, out yonder, whom your honour's just been visiting, when he
was living at Filipov's, before you came, the door stood open all night
long.--He'd be drunk and sleeping like the dead, and his money dropping
out of his pockets all over the floor. I've chanced to see it with
my own eyes, for in our way of life it's impossible to live without
assistance...."

"How do you mean with your own eyes? Did you go in at night then?"

"Maybe I did go in, but no one knows of it."

"Why didn't you kill him?"

"Reckoning it out, I steadied myself. For once having learned for sure
that I can always get one hundred and fifty roubles, why should I go so
far when I can get fifteen hundred roubles, if I only bide my time. For
Captain Lebyadkin (I've heard him with my own ears) had great hopes of
you when he was drunk; and there isn't a tavern here--not the lowest
pot-house--where he hasn't talked about it when he was in that state.
So that hearing it from many lips, I began, too, to rest all my h