y of them. Besides, they were not
new manifestoes; they were, it was said later, just the same as had been
circulated in the X province, and Liputin, who had travelled in that
district and the neighbouring province six weeks previously, declared
that he had seen exactly the same leaflets there then. But what struck
Andrey Antonovitch most was that the overseer of Shpigulin's factory had
brought the police just at the same time two or three packets of exactly
the same leaflets as had been found on the lieutenant. The bundles,
which had been dropped in the factory in the night, had not been opened,
and none of the factory-hands had had time to read one of them. The
incident was a trivial one, but it set Andrey Antonovitch pondering
deeply. The position presented itself to him in an unpleasantly
complicated light.

In this factory the famous "Shpigulin scandal" was just then brewing,
which made so much talk among us and got into the Petersburg and Moscow
papers with all sorts of variations. Three weeks previously one of the
hands had fallen ill and died of Asiatic cholera; then several others
were stricken down. The whole town was in a panic, for the cholera was
coming nearer and nearer and had reached the neighbouring province.
I may observe that satisfactory sanitary measures had been, so far as
possible, taken to meet the unexpected guest. But the factory belonging
to the Shpigulins, who were millionaires and well-connected people, had
somehow been overlooked. And there was a sudden outcry from every one
that this factory was the hot-bed of infection, that the factory
itself, and especially the quarters inhabited by the workpeople, were
so inveterately filthy that even if cholera had not been in the
neighbourhood there might well have been an outbreak there. Steps were
immediately taken, of course, and Andrey Antonovitch vigorously insisted
on their being carried out without delay within three weeks. The factory
was cleansed, but the Shpigulins, for some unknown reason, closed it.
One of the Shpigulin brothers always lived in Petersburg and the other
went away to Moscow when the order was given for cleansing the factory.
The overseer proceeded to pay off the workpeople and, as it appeared,
cheated them shamelessly. The hands began to complain among themselves,
asking to be paid fairly, and foolishly went to the police, though
without much disturbance, for they were not so very much excited. It
was just at this moment th