Akim Danilitch appeared.  Still munching and wiping his lips, he cut his way into the crowd, bellowing: 

“Firemen, be ready!  Disperse!  Mr. Optimov, disperse, or it’ll be the worse for you!  Instead of writing all kinds of things about decent people in the papers, you had better try to behave yourself more conformably!  No good ever comes of reading the papers!”

“Kindly refrain from reflections upon literature!” cried Optimov hotly.  “I am a literary man, and I will allow no one to make reflections upon literature! though, as is the duty of a citizen, I respect you as a father and benefactor!”

“Firemen, turn the hose on them!”

“There’s no water, please your honour!”

“Don’t answer me!  Go and get some!  Look sharp!”

“We’ve nothing to get it in, your honour.  The major has taken the fire-brigade horses to drive his aunt to the station.

“Disperse!  Stand back, damnation take you!  Is that to your taste?  Put him down, the devil!”

“I’ve lost my pencil, please your honour!”

The crowd grew larger and larger.  There is no telling what proportions it might have reached if the new organ just arrived from Moscow had not fortunately begun playing in the tavern close by.  Hearing their favourite tune, the crowd gasped and rushed off to the tavern.  So nobody ever knew why the crowd had assembled, and Potcheshihin and Optimov had by now forgotten the existence of the starlings who were innocently responsible for the proceedings.

An hour later the town was still and silent again, and only a solitary figure was to be seen—­the fireman pacing round and round on the watch-tower.

The same evening Akim Danilitch sat in the grocer’s shop drinking limonade gaseuse and brandy, and writing: 

“In addition to the official report, I venture, your Excellency, to append a few supplementary observations of my own.  Father and benefactor!  In very truth, but for the prayers of your virtuous spouse in her salubrious villa near our town, there’s no knowing what might not have come to pass.  What I have been through to-day I can find no words to express.  The efficiency of Krushensky and of the major of the fire brigade are beyond all praise!  I am proud of such devoted servants of our country!  As for me, I did all that a weak man could do, whose only desire is the welfare of his neighbour; and sitting now in the bosom of my family, with tears in my eyes I thank Him Who spared us bloodshed!  In absence of evidence, the guilty parties remain in custody, but I propose to release them in a week or so.  It was their ignorance that led them astray!”

GONE ASTRAY

A country village wrapped in the darkness of night.  One o’clock strikes from the belfry.  Two lawyers, called Kozyavkin and Laev, both in the best of spirits and a little unsteady on their legs, come out of the wood and turn towards the cottages.