“We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!”

“To Moscow?  What do you mean?” says the bridegroom in amazement.

“It’s queer. . . .  For what station did you take your ticket?”

“For Petersburg.”

“In that case I congratulate you.  You’ve got into the wrong train.”

There follows a minute of silence.  The bridegroom gets up and looks blankly round the company.

“Yes, yes,” Pyotr Petrovitch explains.  “You must have jumped into the wrong train at Bologoe. . . .  After your glass of brandy you succeeded in getting into the down-train.”

Ivan Alexyevitch turns pale, clutches his head, and begins pacing rapidly about the carriage.

“Ach, idiot that I am!” he says in indignation.  “Scoundrel!  The devil devour me!  Whatever am I to do now?  Why, my wife is in that train!  She’s there all alone, expecting me, consumed by anxiety.  Ach, I’m a motley fool!”

The bridegroom falls on the seat and writhes as though someone had trodden on his corns.

“I am un-unhappy man!” he moans.  “What am I to do, what am I to do?”

“There, there!” the passengers try to console him.  “It’s all right . . . .  You must telegraph to your wife and try to change into the Petersburg express.  In that way you’ll overtake her.”

“The Petersburg express!” weeps the bridegroom, the creator of his own happiness.  “And how am I to get a ticket for the Petersburg express?  All my money is with my wife.”

The passengers, laughing and whispering together, make a collection and furnish the happy man with funds.

A TROUBLESOME VISITOR

IN the low-pitched, crooked little hut of Artyom, the forester, two men were sitting under the big dark ikon—­Artyom himself, a short and lean peasant with a wrinkled, aged-looking face and a little beard that grew out of his neck, and a well-grown young man in a new crimson shirt and big wading boots, who had been out hunting and come in for the night.  They were sitting on a bench at a little three-legged table on which a tallow candle stuck into a bottle was lazily burning.

Outside the window the darkness of the night was full of the noisy uproar into which nature usually breaks out before a thunderstorm.  The wind howled angrily and the bowed trees moaned miserably.  One pane of the window had been pasted up with paper, and leaves torn off by the wind could be heard pattering against the paper.

“I tell you what, good Christian,” said Artyom in a hoarse little tenor half-whisper, staring with unblinking, scared-looking eyes at the hunter.  “I am not afraid of wolves or bears, or wild beasts of any sort, but I am afraid of man.  You can save yourself from beasts with a gun or some other weapon, but you have no means of saving yourself from a wicked man.”

“To be sure, you can fire at a beast, but if you shoot at a robber you will have to answer for it:  you will go to Siberia.”