ng about it. I say, Proshka, bring the
lantern!"

Proshka came with the lantern. They all went to the stable, and Stepan
knew at once what had happened.

"Thieves have been here, Peter Nikolaevich," he said. "The lock is
broken."

"No; you don't say so!"

"Yes, the brigands! I don't see 'Mashka.' 'Hawk' is here. But 'Beauty'
is not. Nor yet 'Dapple-grey.'"

Three horses had been stolen!

Peter Nikolaevich did not utter a word at first. He only frowned and
took deep breaths.

"Oh," he said after a while. "If only I could lay hands on them! Who was
on guard?"

"Peter. He evidently fell asleep."

Peter Nikolaevich called in the police, and making an appeal to all the
authorities, sent his men to track the thieves. But the horses were not
to be found.

"Wicked people," said Peter Nikolaevich. "How could they! I was always
so kind to them. Now, wait! Brigands! Brigands the whole lot of them. I
will no longer be kind."

X

IN the meanwhile the horses, the grey ones, had all been disposed of;
Mashka was sold to the gipsies for eighteen roubles; Dapple-grey was
exchanged for another horse, and passed over to another peasant who
lived forty miles away from the estate; and Beauty died on the way.
The man who conducted the whole affair was--Ivan Mironov. He had
been employed on the estate, and knew all the whereabouts of Peter
Nikolaevich. He wanted to get back the money he had lost, and stole the
horses for that reason.

After his misfortune with the forged coupon, Ivan Mironov took to drink;
and all he possessed would have gone on drink if it had not been for his
wife, who locked up his clothes, the horses' collars, and all the rest
of what he would otherwise have squandered in public-houses. In his
drunken state Ivan Mironov was continually thinking, not only of the man
who had wronged him, but of all the rich people who live on robbing
the poor. One day he had a drink with some peasants from the suburbs
of Podolsk, and was walking home together with them. On the way the
peasants, who were completely drunk, told him they had stolen a horse
from a peasant's cottage. Ivan Mironov got angry, and began to abuse the
horse-thieves.

"What a shame!" he said. "A horse is like a brother to the peasant. And
you robbed him of it? It is a great sin, I tell you. If you go in for
stealing horses, steal them from the landowners. They are worse than
dogs, and deserve anything."

The talk went on, and the peasants from