nd talked, though at the same time he was casting
timorous and suspicious looks at Solomon. The latter was standing
in the same attitude and still smiling. To judge from his eyes and
his smile, his contempt and hatred were genuine, but that was so
out of keeping with his plucked-looking figure that it seemed to
Yegorushka as though he were putting on his defiant attitude and
biting sarcastic smile to play the fool for the entertainment of
their honoured guests.

After drinking six glasses of tea in silence, Kuzmitchov cleared a
space before him on the table, took his bag, the one which he kept
under his head when he slept under the chaise, untied the string
and shook it. Rolls of paper notes were scattered out of the bag
on the table.

"While we have the time, Father Christopher, let us reckon up,"
said Kuzmitchov.

Moisey Moisevitch was embarrassed at the sight of the money. He got
up, and, as a man of delicate feeling unwilling to pry into other
people's secrets, he went out of the room on tiptoe, swaying his
arms. Solomon remained where he was.

"How many are there in the rolls of roubles?" Father Christopher
began.

"The rouble notes are done up in fifties, . . . the three-rouble
notes in nineties, the twenty-five and hundred roubles in thousands.
You count out seven thousand eight hundred for Varlamov, and I will
count out for Gusevitch. And mind you don't make a mistake. . ."

Yegorushka had never in his life seen so much money as was lying
on the table before him. There must have been a great deal of money,
for the roll of seven thousand eight hundred, which Father Christopher
put aside for Varlamov, seemed very small compared with the whole
heap. At any other time such a mass of money would have impressed
Yegorushka, and would have moved him to reflect how many cracknels,
buns and poppy-cakes could be bought for that money. Now he looked
at it listlessly, only conscious of the disgusting smell of kerosene
and rotten apples that came from the heap of notes. He was exhausted
by the jolting ride in the chaise, tired out and sleepy. His head
was heavy, his eyes would hardly keep open and his thoughts were
tangled like threads. If it had been possible he would have been
relieved to lay his head on the table, so as not to see the lamp
and the fingers moving over the heaps of notes, and to have let his
tired sleepy thoughts go still more at random. When he tried to
keep awake, the light of the lamp, the cups a