The officer only laughed a little, and after a while inquired: 

“Have you any arms in the house?”

“Yes.  We have.  Some old things.”

“Bring them all, here, on to this table.”

The servant made another attempt to obtain protection.

“Won’t your honour tell these chaps? . . .”

But the officer looked at him in silence in such a way that he gave it up at once and hurried off to call the pantry-boy to help him collect the arms.  Meantime the officer walked slowly through all the rooms in the house, examining them attentively but touching nothing.  The peasants in the hall fell back and took off their caps when he passed through.  He said nothing whatever to them.  When he came back to the study all the arms to be found in the house were lying on the table.  There was a pair of big flint-lock holster pistols from Napoleonic times, two cavalry swords, one of the French the other of the Polish Army pattern, with a fowling-piece or two.

The officer, opening the window, flung out pistols, swords and guns, one after another, and his troopers ran to pick them up.  The peasants in the hall, encouraged by his manner, had stolen after him into the study.  He gave not the slightest sign of being conscious of their existence and, his business being apparently concluded, strode out of the house without a word.  Directly he left, the peasants in the study put on their caps and began to smile at each other.

The Cossacks rode away, passing through the yards of the home farm straight into the fields.  The priest, still arguing with the peasants, moved gradually down the drive and his earnest eloquence was drawing the silent mob after him, away from the house.  This justice must be rendered to the parish priests of the Greek Church that, strangers to the country as they were (being all drawn from the interior of Russia), the majority of them used such influence as they had over their flocks in the cause of peace and humanity.  True to the spirit of their calling, they tried to soothe the passions of the excited peasantry and opposed rapine and violence whenever they could, with all their might.  And this conduct they pursued against the express wishes of the authorities.  Later on some of them were made to suffer for this disobedience by being removed abruptly to the far north or sent away to Siberian parishes.

The servant was anxious to get rid of the few peasants who had got into the house.  What sort of conduct was that, he asked them, towards a man who was only a tenant, had been invariably good and considerate to the villagers for years; and only the other day had agreed to give up two meadows for the use of the village herd?  He reminded them, too, of Mr. Nicholas B.’s devotion to the sick in the time of cholera.  Every word of this was true and so far effective that the fellows began to scratch their heads and look irresolute.  The speaker then pointed at the window, exclaiming:  “Look! there’s all your crowd going away quietly and you silly chaps had better go after them and pray God to forgive you your evil thoughts.”