etails of the public funeral, the
condition of his widow, and the incomprehensible escape and continued
liberty of the assassin. It had been still light when the man--all were
agreed that it had been a man,--halted in the shadow of a doorway till
his victim's vehicle was in the road opposite him. Then he had shot the
fatal bullet, stepped calmly out of the doorway, and, mingling with the
quickly gathering crowd, passed at once from the sight of the one or two
who _believed_ they had seen him shoot. And now he had disappeared into
the wilderness of the city. Though a reward of three thousand roubles
was offered for his capture, none had, as yet, brought so much as a
clew.

Ivan spent the week absorbing these reiterated facts, and trying,
vaguely, to resolve them into some sort of order: to come to some sort
of decision regarding his own course of action. Certain he was that he
knew where to lay hands upon Ternoff's assassin. Certain also was he
that, if he gave Burevsky up to justice--his father's "justice," the
responsibility of Burevsky's execution or exile would be on his
conscience forevermore.

What to do?

Burevsky and his companions had used him ruthlessly, as their
shield.--Ivan had no idea of how slight had been the advantage they took
in comparison with predecessors of his.--Why should he hesitate to visit
them with _his_ ideas of right?--But, though he came forever to this
point he always left it again, unanswered, and went reluctantly back to
the beginning of his syllogism. The men had been his friends. He had
liked them more than he had known. He had broken their bread. Could he
deliver them up to their fearful retribution?--God help him, he could
not: criminals, menacing society, though they were.

It took Ivan an entire week to come to the simple and obvious decision
of a middle course, so harassed and over-excited had his brain become.
But when, on the morning of May 17th, it suddenly occurred to him to go
to Sergius and make a clean breast of his doubt and his self-reproach,
he could hardly constrain himself to wait till his classes were over and
a mouthful of luncheon swallowed before he betook himself, in a swift
droschky along the bank of the river, till he came to the bridge across
which lay the Student Quarter. Thence he proceeded, on foot, through the
maze of ugly little streets, wherein the spring sunshine only showed up
all the more pitilessly their meanness, and filth, and ugliness. Once at