“The deuce take ’em!” said Wassily’s comrade.  “Well, what else?  You dug up the watch?”

“Of course I dug it up:  I have it now.  Only, I can’t show it to you.  There was a dreadful row about it.  David had taken it that very night from his aunt’s bed.  I tell you, he’s a great fellow.  So I can’t show it to you.  But stop:  the officers will soon be back.  I’ll sell it to one of them, and lose the money at cards.”

I listened no longer:  at full speed I rushed home and went straight to David.  “Brother,” I began—­“Brother, forgive me!  I have done you a wrong.  I have suspected you:  I have blamed you.  You see how moved I am:  forgive me.”

“What’s the matter with you?” asked David:  “explain yourself.”

“I suspected that you had dug up our watch from under the apple tree.”

“That watch again!  Isn’t it there?”

“It is not there.  I thought you’d taken it to help your friends, and it was that Wassily.”

I told David what I had heard beneath the window.  But how describe my astonishment?  I thought David would be vexed, but I could not have expected what really happened, I had hardly finished my story when he burst into the most ungovernable rage.  David, who held this whole miserable affair, as he called it, of the watch in utter contempt—­the same David who had assured me more than once that it was not worth an empty egg-shell—­he suddenly sprang up, his face aflame, grinding his teeth and clenching his fist.  “That can’t be allowed,” he said at last.  “How does he dare to take another’s property?  I’ll give him a lesson.  Only wait:  I never forgive a rascal.”

To this day I don’t see what made David so angry.  Was he already full of wrath, and had Wassily’s conduct only thrown oil on the flame?  Was he vexed at my suspecting him?  I cannot say, but I never saw him so aroused.  I stood before him open-mouthed, and only wondered why he breathed so hard and heavily.

“What have you decided to do?” I asked finally.

“You’ll see after dinner.  I’ll find that fellow and I’ll have a talk with him.”

“Well,” thought I, “I should not like to be in that fellow’s shoes.  What in the world is going to happen?”

The following happened.  As soon as that sleepy, heavy quiet came which even now falls like a hot feather comforter on a Russian house after dinner, David went, I following him with a beating heart, into the servants’ hall and called Wassily out.  At first he did not want to come, but finally he concluded to obey and to follow us into the garden.  David stood squarely before him:  Wassily was a whole head the taller.

“Wassily Tarentiev,” began my comrade with a firm voice, “six weeks ago you took from under this apple tree a watch which we had placed there.  You had no right to do that:  it was not yours.  Give it to me at once.”

Wassily was somewhat amazed, but he soon collected himself:  “What watch?  What are you talking about?  God knows I haven’t any watch.”