and snatches
something off his breast. But it is not difficult to guess his
secret.

"Congratulate me," he often says to Ivan Dmitritch; "I have been
presented with the Stanislav order of the second degree with the
star. The second degree with the star is only given to foreigners,
but for some reason they want to make an exception for me," he says
with a smile, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. "That I must
confess I did not expect."

"I don't understand anything about that," Ivan Dmitritch replies
morosely.

"But do you know what I shall attain to sooner or later?" the former
sorter persists, screwing up his eyes slyly. "I shall certainly get
the Swedish 'Polar Star.' That's an order it is worth working for,
a white cross with a black ribbon. It's very beautiful."

Probably in no other place is life so monotonous as in this ward.
In the morning the patients, except the paralytic and the fat
peasant, wash in the entry at a big tab and wipe themselves with
the skirts of their dressing-gowns; after that they drink tea out
of tin mugs which Nikita brings them out of the main building.
Everyone is allowed one mugful. At midday they have soup made out
of sour cabbage and boiled grain, in the evening their supper
consists of grain left from dinner. In the intervals they lie down,
sleep, look out of window, and walk from one corner to the other.
And so every day. Even the former sorter always talks of the same
orders.

Fresh faces are rarely seen in Ward No. 6. The doctor has not taken
in any new mental cases for a long time, and the people who are
fond of visiting lunatic asylums are few in this world. Once every
two months Semyon Lazaritch, the barber, appears in the ward. How
he cuts the patients' hair, and how Nikita helps him to do it, and
what a trepidation the lunatics are always thrown into by the arrival
of the drunken, smiling barber, we will not describe.

No one even looks into the ward except the barber. The patients are
condemned to see day after day no one but Nikita.

A rather strange rumour has, however, been circulating in the
hospital of late.

It is rumoured that the doctor has begun to visit Ward No. 6.

V

A strange rumour!

Dr. Andrey Yefimitch Ragin is a strange man in his way. They say
that when he was young he was very religious, and prepared himself
for a clerical career, and that when he had finished his studies
at the high school in 1863 he intended to enter a theological
ac