At that instant Yasha walks into the room looking for his father.  He listens and is about to sit down on a chair, but probably thinking of his weight goes and sits on the window-sill.

“They don’t take any notice of that,” Malahin goes on, “and charge me and my son the third-class fare, too, forty-two roubles, for going in the van with the bullocks.  This is my son Yakov.  I have two more at home, but they have gone in for study.  Well and apart from that it is my opinion that the railways have ruined the cattle trade.  In old days when they drove them in herds it was better.”

The old man’s talk is lengthy and drawn out.  After every sentence he looks at Yasha as though he would say:  “See how I am talking to clever people.”

“Upon my word!” the inspector interrupts him.  “No one is indignant, no one criticizes.  And why?  It is very simple.  An abomination strikes the eye and arouses indignation only when it is exceptional, when the established order is broken by it.  Here, where, saving your presence, it constitutes the long-established program and forms and enters into the basis of the order itself, where every sleeper on the line bears the trace of it and stinks of it, one too easily grows accustomed to it!  Yes, sir!”

The second bell rings, the gentlemen in the queer overcoat gets up.  The inspector takes him by the arm and, still talking with heat, goes off with him to the platform.  After the third bell the station-master runs into his room, and sits down at his table.

“Listen, with what number am I to go?” asks Malahin.

The station-master looks at a form and says indignantly: 

“Are you Malahin, eight vanloads?  You must pay a rouble a van and six roubles and twenty kopecks for stamps.  You have no stamps.  Total, fourteen roubles, twenty kopecks.”

Receiving the money, he writes something down, dries it with sand, and, hurriedly snatching up a bundle of forms, goes quickly out of the room.

At ten o’clock in the evening Malahin gets an answer from the traffic manager:  “Give precedence.”

Reading the telegram through, the old man winks significantly and, very well pleased with himself, puts it in his pocket.

“Here,” he says to Yasha, “look and learn.”

At midnight his train goes on.  The night is dark and cold like the previous one; the waits at the stations are long.  Yasha sits on the cape and imperturbably strums on the accordion, while the old man is still more eager to exert himself.  At one of the stations he is overtaken by a desire to lodge a complaint.  At his request a gendarme sits down and writes: 

“November 10, 188-.—­I, non-commissioned officer of the Z. section of the N. police department of railways, Ilya Tchered, in accordance with article II of the statute of May 19, 1871, have drawn up this protocol at the station of X. as herewith follows.... "

“What am I to write next?” asks the gendarme.