ruined us all."

"But why did not the others attack him. It was you alone who broke his
head open."

"That is false. We all fell upon him. The village agreed to kill him.
I only gave the final stroke. What is the use of inflicting unnecessary
sufferings on a man?"

The judges were astonished at Stepan's wonderful coolness in narrating
the story of his crime--how the peasants fell upon Ivan Mironov, and
how he had given the final stroke. Stepan actually did not see anything
particularly revolting in this murder. During his military service
he had been ordered on one occasion to shoot a soldier, and, now with
regard to Ivan Mironov, he saw nothing loathsome in it. "A man shot is
a dead man--that's all. It was him to-day, it might be me to-morrow," he
thought. Stepan was only sentenced to one year's imprisonment, which was
a mild punishment for what he had done. His peasant's dress was taken
away from him and put in the prison stores, and he had a prison suit and
felt boots given to him instead. Stepan had never had much respect for
the authorities, but now he became quite convinced that all the chiefs,
all the fine folk, all except the Czar--who alone had pity on the
peasants and was just--all were robbers who suck blood out of the
people. All he heard from the deported convicts, and those sentenced to
hard labour, with whom he had made friends in prisons, confirmed him
in his views. One man had been sentenced to hard labour for having
convicted his superiors of a theft; another for having struck an
official who had unjustly confiscated the property of a peasant; a third
because he forged bank notes. The well-to-do-people, the merchants,
might do whatever they chose and come to no harm; but a poor peasant,
for a trumpery reason or for none at all, was sent to prison to become
food for vermin.

He had visits from his wife while in prison. Her life without him was
miserable enough, when, to make it worse, her cottage was destroyed by
fire. She was completely ruined, and had to take to begging with her
children. His wife's misery embittered Stepan still more. He got on very
badly with all the people in the prison; was rude to every one; and
one day he nearly killed the cook with an axe, and therefore got an
additional year in prison. In the course of that year he received the
news that his wife was dead, and that he had no longer a home.

When Stepan had finished his time in prison, he was taken to the prison
stores, a