before.
From our gate there was a road which, passing the forge and the
pool which never dried up, ran into the main road. I looked at the
telegraph-posts, about which clouds of dust were whirling, and at the
sleepy birds sitting on the wires, and I suddenly felt so dreary that I
began to cry.

A dusty wagonette crammed full of townspeople, probably going to visit
the shrine, drove by along the main road. The wagonette was hardly out
of sight when a light chaise with a pair of horses came into view. In it
was Akim Nikititch, the police inspector, standing up and holding on to
the coachman's belt. To my great surprise, the chaise turned into our
road and flew by me in at the gate. While I was puzzling why the police
inspector had come to see us, I heard a noise, and a carriage with three
horses came into sight on the road. In the carriage stood the police
captain, directing his coachman towards our gate.

"And why is he coming?" I thought, looking at the dusty police captain.
"Most probably Pobyedimsky has complained of Fyodor to him, and they
have come to take him to prison."

But the mystery was not so easily solved. The police inspector and the
police captain were only the first instalment, for five minutes had
scarcely passed when a coach drove in at our gate. It dashed by me so
swiftly that I could only get a glimpse of a red beard.

Lost in conjecture and full of misgivings, I ran to the house. In the
passage first of all I saw mother; she was pale and looking with horror
towards the door, from which came the sounds of men's voices. The
visitors had taken her by surprise in the very throes of migraine.

"Who has come, mother?" I asked.

"Sister," I heard my uncle's voice, "will you send in something to eat
for the governor and me?"

"It is easy to say 'something to eat,'" whispered my mother, numb with
horror. "What have I time to get ready now? I am put to shame in my old
age!"

Mother clutched at her head and ran into the kitchen. The governor's
sudden visit stirred and overwhelmed the whole household. A ferocious
slaughter followed. A dozen fowls, five turkeys, eight ducks, were
killed, and in the fluster the old gander, the progenitor of our whole
flock of geese and a great favourite of mother's, was beheaded. The
coachmen and the cook seemed frenzied, and slaughtered birds at random,
without distinction of age or breed. For the sake of some wretched sauce
a pair of valuable pigeons, as dear to me as