earless, triumphant glance at the
little baldheaded lawyer, who listened and nodded, although he did not
quite understand what the Captain meant.

"You do a great deal of good!" he whispered, nodding, while a childish
smile flitted over his sad, pale little face. And after a moment's
reflection he added, "You are a good man. You surely are!"

Michael Petroff shook his head. "I do my duty!" he declared earnestly.
And laying his hand on his heart while his clear steel-blue eyes
flashed, he added: "My sacred duty!"

Captain Michael Petroff, former officer in a St. Petersburg regiment,
considered it his life work to plead for justice in this world. He
called himself "The Tribunal of right and justice." He subscribed for
two large daily papers, and searched them every day for cases in which,
according to his judgment, injustice had been done to some one. And
every day Michael Petroff found cases. Cases and nothing but cases.
These cases he cut out, arranged them in chronological order and
immediately went to work on them.

He often sat up late in his office, as he called his room, or in his
editorial sanctum, as he sometimes designated it in an undertone when
speaking to his confidential friend. There he would sit and write, in a
hand as neat as copperplate, his memorials, protests, petitions, which
he delivered every day at six o'clock to the head physician. Dr. Maerz.
who had undertaken to forward them regularly. Dr. Maerz was glad to
receive these manuscripts which he laid in a separate pigeonhole, in
order to use them from time to time as material for his work on
Graphomania.

The little time that this activity left him, Michael Petroff employed
in editing his newspaper. And it was because of this paper that he
sometimes secretly referred to his room as "his editorial sanctum."
This newspaper did not appear regularly, but only when it happened to
be ready. It usually appeared once a year, but sometimes twice, if his
nervous condition urged him to greater haste.

Michael Petroff's paper was a fairly accurate representation of an
ordinary daily paper, from the heading, in which the conditions of
subscription were stated, as well as the name of the city in which the
paper appeared--the city was arbitrarily chosen by Michael Petroff--to
the fictitious names of the publisher and editor. Like any other paper,
it contained advertisements, which Michael Petroff simply cut out of
other papers, a leading article, and contri