ver with straw, while Kerbalay began hurriedly
harnessing the asses.

"Smuggling, perhaps," thought the deacon.

Here was the fallen tree with the dried pine-needles, here was the
blackened patch from the fire. He remembered the picnic and all its
incidents, the fire, the singing of the mountaineers, his sweet
dreams of becoming a bishop, and of the Church procession. . . .
The Black River had grown blacker and broader with the rain. The
deacon walked cautiously over the narrow bridge, which by now was
reached by the topmost crests of the dirty water, and went up through
the little copse to the drying-shed.

"A splendid head," he thought, stretching himself on the straw, and
thinking of Von Koren. "A fine head--God grant him health; only
there is cruelty in him. . . ."

Why did he hate Laevsky and Laevsky hate him? Why were they going
to fight a duel? If from their childhood they had known poverty as
the deacon had; if they had been brought up among ignorant,
hard-hearted, grasping, coarse and ill-mannered people who grudged
you a crust of bread, who spat on the floor and hiccoughed at dinner
and at prayers; if they had not been spoilt from childhood by the
pleasant surroundings and the select circle of friends they lived
in--how they would have rushed at each other, how readily they
would have overlooked each other's shortcomings and would have
prized each other's strong points! Why, how few even outwardly
decent people there were in the world! It was true that Laevsky was
flighty, dissipated, queer, but he did not steal, did not spit
loudly on the floor; he did not abuse his wife and say, "You'll eat
till you burst, but you don't want to work;" he would not beat a
child with reins, or give his servants stinking meat to eat--
surely this was reason enough to be indulgent to him? Besides, he
was the chief sufferer from his failings, like a sick man from his
sores. Instead of being led by boredom and some sort of misunderstanding
to look for degeneracy, extinction, heredity, and other such
incomprehensible things in each other, would they not do better to
stoop a little lower and turn their hatred and anger where whole
streets resounded with moanings from coarse ignorance, greed,
scolding, impurity, swearing, the shrieks of women. . . .

The sound of a carriage interrupted the deacon's thoughts. He glanced
out of the door and saw a carriage and in it three persons: Laevsky,
Sheshkovsky, and the superintendent of t