erk.
'Otherwise you would not have sold a chest of tea and a bale of tobacco.
Beside, the coat your boy is wearing was made from our cloth.'

"This was true. On the third day after receiving the goods, Sarkis had
sold a bale of tobacco and a chest of tea, and had cut off several yards
of cloth. It was very singular that in the course of three months Sarkis
had not once caught sight of Hemorrhoid Jack to call him to account for
the delivery of the goods. He had been several times to his house, where
they said, 'He is at the store.' At the store they said Jack was at
home. It was very evident that he wished to defraud Sarkis. After much
talk back and forth the matter came into the courts, and since Sarkis
had sold part of the goods and had given a receipt for them, he had to
pay the sum demanded.

"For several months past business had been going very badly with the
poor fellow and he could not raise the required sum, so he had to give
up his property. First they drove the poor man out of his house and
emptied his store and his storehouse. Then they sold the tobacco and the
tea, for which no one would give more than fifty rubles, for both were
half rotten. The store and all that was in it were then auctioned off
for a few hundred rubles, and finally the house was offered for sale. No
one would buy it, for among our people the praiseworthy custom rules
that they never buy a house put up at auction till they convince
themselves that the owner sells it of his own free-will. The household
furniture was also sold, and Sarkis became almost a beggar, and was
obliged, half naked, to leave his house, with his wife and children.

"I proposed that they should occupy my house, but he would not have it.
'From to-day the black earth is my dwelling-place,' he said, and rented
a small house at the edge of the town near where the fields begin.

"When the neighbors found out the treachery of Hemorrhoid Jack, they
were terribly angry, and one of them threw a note into his yard in which
was written: that if he took possession of poor Sarkis's house they
would tear or burn it down. That was just what John wished, and he
immediately sent carpenters to tear down the house and stable and then
he sold the wood.

"At this time I became very sick and lay two months in bed. When I got
up again I thought to myself, 'I must go and visit the poor wretches!' I
went to their little house, but found the door locked and the windows
boarded up. I asked