Sheshkovsky said something, Boyko explained something again, but Laevsky did not hear—­or rather heard, but did not understand.  He cocked his pistol when the time came to do so, and raised the cold, heavy weapon with the barrel upwards.  He forgot to unbutton his overcoat, and it felt very tight over his shoulder and under his arm, and his arm rose as awkwardly as though the sleeve had been cut out of tin.  He remembered the hatred he had felt the night before for the swarthy brow and curly hair, and felt that even yesterday at the moment of intense hatred and anger he could not have shot a man.  Fearing that the bullet might somehow hit Von Koren by accident, he raised the pistol higher and higher, and felt that this too obvious magnanimity was indelicate and anything but magnanimous, but he did not know how else to do and could do nothing else.  Looking at the pale, ironically smiling face of Von Koren, who evidently had been convinced from the beginning that his opponent would fire in the air, Laevsky thought that, thank God, everything would be over directly, and all that he had to do was to press the trigger rather hard. . . .

He felt a violent shock on the shoulder; there was the sound of a shot and an answering echo in the mountains:  ping-ting!

Von Koren cocked his pistol and looked at Ustimovitch, who was pacing as before with his hands behind his back, taking no notice of any one.

“Doctor,” said the zoologist, “be so good as not to move to and fro like a pendulum.  You make me dizzy.”

The doctor stood still.  Von Koren began to take aim at Laevsky.

“It’s all over!” thought Laevsky.

The barrel of the pistol aimed straight at his face, the expression of hatred and contempt in Von Koren’s attitude and whole figure, and the murder just about to be committed by a decent man in broad daylight, in the presence of decent men, and the stillness and the unknown force that compelled Laevsky to stand still and not to run —­how mysterious it all was, how incomprehensible and terrible!

The moment while Von Koren was taking aim seemed to Laevsky longer than a night:  he glanced imploringly at the seconds; they were pale and did not stir.

“Make haste and fire,” thought Laevsky, and felt that his pale, quivering, and pitiful face must arouse even greater hatred in Von Koren.

“I’ll kill him directly,” thought Von Koren, aiming at his forehead, with his finger already on the catch.  “Yes, of course I’ll kill him.”

“He’ll kill him!” A despairing shout was suddenly heard somewhere very close at hand.

A shot rang out at once.  Seeing that Laevsky remained standing where he was and did not fall, they all looked in the direction from which the shout had come, and saw the deacon.  With pale face and wet hair sticking to his forehead and his cheeks, wet through and muddy, he was standing in the maize on the further bank, smiling rather queerly and waving his wet hat.  Sheshkovsky laughed with joy, burst into tears, and moved away. . . .