s a good thing you looked up. I was nearly shouting to you," Mitya
said in a joyful, hurried whisper. "Climb in here quickly! How splendid
that you've come! I was just thinking of you!"

Alyosha was delighted too, but he did not know how to get over the hurdle.
Mitya put his powerful hand under his elbow to help him jump. Tucking up
his cassock, Alyosha leapt over the hurdle with the agility of a
bare-legged street urchin.

"Well done! Now come along," said Mitya in an enthusiastic whisper.

"Where?" whispered Alyosha, looking about him and finding himself in a
deserted garden with no one near but themselves. The garden was small, but
the house was at least fifty paces away.

"There's no one here. Why do you whisper?" asked Alyosha.

"Why do I whisper? Deuce take it!" cried Dmitri at the top of his voice.
"You see what silly tricks nature plays one. I am here in secret, and on
the watch. I'll explain later on, but, knowing it's a secret, I began
whispering like a fool, when there's no need. Let us go. Over there. Till
then be quiet. I want to kiss you.

Glory to God in the world,
Glory to God in me ...

I was just repeating that, sitting here, before you came."

The garden was about three acres in extent, and planted with trees only
along the fence at the four sides. There were apple-trees, maples, limes
and birch-trees. The middle of the garden was an empty grass space, from
which several hundredweight of hay was carried in the summer. The garden
was let out for a few roubles for the summer. There were also plantations
of raspberries and currants and gooseberries laid out along the sides; a
kitchen garden had been planted lately near the house.

Dmitri led his brother to the most secluded corner of the garden. There,
in a thicket of lime-trees and old bushes of black currant, elder,
snowball-tree, and lilac, there stood a tumble-down green summer-house,
blackened with age. Its walls were of lattice-work, but there was still a
roof which could give shelter. God knows when this summer-house was built.
There was a tradition that it had been put up some fifty years before by a
retired colonel called von Schmidt, who owned the house at that time. It
was all in decay, the floor was rotting, the planks were loose, the
woodwork smelled musty. In the summer-house there was a green wooden table
fixed in the ground, and round it were some green benches upon which it
was still possible to sit. Alyosha had at o