In the midst of his indignation his chin sinks into his collar, he lays his head on his portfolio, and gradually subsides.  Weariness gets the upper hand and he begins to doze.

“I’ve found the portfolio!” he hears Kozyavkin cry triumphantly.  “I shall find the cape in a minute and then off we go!”

Then through his sleep he hears the barking of dogs.  First one dog barks, then a second, and a third. . . .  And the barking of the dogs blends with the cackling of the fowls into a sort of savage music.  Someone comes up to Laev and asks him something.  Then he hears someone climb over his head into the window, then a knocking and a shouting. . . .  A woman in a red apron stands beside him with a lantern in her hand and asks him something.

“You’ve no right to say so,” he hears Kozyavkin’s voice.  “I am a lawyer, a bachelor of laws—­Kozyavkin—­here’s my visiting card.”

“What do I want with your card?” says someone in a husky bass.  “You’ve disturbed all my fowls, you’ve smashed the eggs!  Look what you’ve done.  The turkey poults were to have come out to-day or to-morrow, and you’ve smashed them.  What’s the use of your giving me your card, sir?”

“How dare you interfere with me!  No!  I won’t have it!”

“I am thirsty,” thinks Laev, trying to open his eyes, and he feels somebody climb down from the window over his head.

“My name is Kozyavkin!  I have a cottage here.  Everyone knows me.”

“We don’t know anyone called Kozyavkin.”

“What are you saying?  Call the elder.  He knows me.”

“Don’t get excited, the constable will be here directly. . . .  We know all the summer visitors here, but I’ve never seen you in my life.”

“I’ve had a cottage in Rottendale for five years.”

“Whew!  Do you take this for the Dale?  This is Sicklystead, but Rottendale is farther to the right, beyond the match factory.  It’s three miles from here.”

“Bless my soul!  Then I’ve taken the wrong turning!”

The cries of men and fowls mingle with the barking of dogs, and the voice of Kozyavkin rises above the chaos of confused sounds: 

“You shut up!  I’ll pay.  I’ll show you whom you have to deal with!”

Little by little the voices die down.  Laev feels himself being shaken by the shoulder. . . .

AN AVENGER

Shortly after finding his wife in flagrante delicto Fyodor Fyodorovitch Sigaev was standing in Schmuck and Co.’s, the gunsmiths, selecting a suitable revolver.  His countenance expressed wrath, grief, and unalterable determination.

“I know what I must do,” he was thinking.  “The sanctities of the home are outraged, honour is trampled in the mud, vice is triumphant, and therefore as a citizen and a man of honour I must be their avenger.  First, I will kill her and her lover and then myself.”

He had not yet chosen a revolver or killed anyone, but already in imagination he saw three bloodstained corpses, broken skulls, brains oozing from them, the commotion, the crowd of gaping spectators, the post-mortem. . . .  With the malignant joy of an insulted man he pictured the horror of the relations and the public, the agony of the traitress, and was mentally reading leading articles on the destruction of the traditions of the home.