ty to her life, and I was only the
sledge-driver who drove her from one entertainment to another. Now
she did not need me. She would take flight, and I should be alone.

And as though in response to my thought, there came a despairing
scream from the garden.

"He-e-elp!"

It was a shrill, womanish voice, and as though to mimic it the wind
whistled in the chimney on the same shrill note. Half a minute
passed, and again through the noise of the wind, but coming, it
seemed, from the other end of the yard:

"He-e-elp!"

"Misail, do you hear?" my wife asked me softly. "Do you hear?"

She came out from the bedroom in her nightgown, with her hair down,
and listened, looking at the dark window.

"Someone is being murdered," she said. "That is the last straw."

I took my gun and went out. It was very dark outside, the wind was
high, and it was difficult to stand. I went to the gate and listened,
the trees roared, the wind whistled and, probably at the feeble-minded
peasant's, a dog howled lazily. Outside the gates the darkness was
absolute, not a light on the railway-line. And near the lodge, which
a year before had been the office, suddenly sounded a smothered
scream:

"He-e-elp!"

"Who's there?" I called.

There were two people struggling. One was thrusting the other out,
while the other was resisting, and both were breathing heavily.

"Leave go," said one, and I recognized Ivan Tcheprakov; it was he
who was shrieking in a shrill, womanish voice: "Let go, you damned
brute, or I'll bite your hand off."

The other I recognized as Moisey. I separated them, and as I did
so I could not resist hitting Moisey two blows in the face. He fell
down, then got up again, and I hit him once more.

"He tried to kill me," he muttered. "He was trying to get at his
mamma's chest. . . . I want to lock him up in the lodge for security."

Tcheprakov was drunk and did not recognize me; he kept drawing deep
breaths, as though he were just going to shout "help" again.

I left them and went back to the house; my wife was lying on her
bed; she had dressed. I told her what had happened in the yard, and
did not conceal the fact that I had hit Moisey.

"It's terrible to live in the country," she said.

"And what a long night it is. Oh dear, if only it were over!"

"He-e-elp!" we heard again, a little later.

"I'll go and stop them," I said.

"No, let them bite each other's throats," she said with an expression
of disgust.

She