“What?” Lyzhin asked.  “Say it again.”

“‘Administration,’” the constable repeated aloud.  “He has been calling me that for a long while, for the last six years.  ’Hullo, Administration!’ But I don’t mind; let him, God bless him!  Sometimes a lady will send one a glass of vodka and a bit of pie and one drinks to her health.  But peasants give more; peasants are more kind-hearted, they have the fear of God in their hearts:  one will give a bit of bread, another a drop of cabbage soup, another will stand one a glass.  The village elders treat one to tea in the tavern.  Here the witnesses have gone to their tea.  ‘Loshadin,’ they said, ’you stay here and keep watch for us,’ and they gave me a kopeck each.  You see, they are frightened, not being used to it, and yesterday they gave me fifteen kopecks and offered me a glass.”

“And you, aren’t you frightened?”

“I am, sir; but of course it is my duty, there is no getting away from it.  In the summer I was taking a convict to the town, and he set upon me and gave me such a drubbing!  And all around were fields, forest—­how could I get away from him?  It’s just the same here.  I remember the gentleman, Mr. Lesnitsky, when he was so high, and I knew his father and mother.  I am from the village of Nedoshtchotova, and they, the Lesnitsky family, were not more than three-quarters of a mile from us and less than that, their ground next to ours, and Mr. Lesnitsky had a sister, a God-fearing and tender-hearted lady.  Lord keep the soul of Thy servant Yulya, eternal memory to her!  She was never married, and when she was dying she divided all her property; she left three hundred acres to the monastery, and six hundred to the commune of peasants of Nedoshtchotova to commemorate her soul; but her brother hid the will, they do say burnt it in the stove, and took all this land for himself.  He thought, to be sure, it was for his benefit; but—­nay, wait a bit, you won’t get on in the world through injustice, brother.  The gentleman did not go to confession for twenty years after.  He kept away from the church, to be sure, and died impenitent.  He burst.  He was a very fat man, so he burst lengthways.  Then everything was taken from the young master, from Seryozha, to pay the debts—­everything there was.  Well, he had not gone very far in his studies, he couldn’t do anything, and the president of the Rural Board, his uncle—­’I’ll take him’—­Seryozha, I mean—­thinks he, ’for an agent; let him collect the insurance, that’s not a difficult job,’ and the gentleman was young and proud, he wanted to be living on a bigger scale and in better style and with more freedom.  To be sure it was a come-down for him to be jolting about the district in a wretched cart and talking to the peasants; he would walk and keep looking on the ground, looking on the ground and saying nothing; if you called his name right in his ear, ‘Sergey Sergeyitch!’ he would look round like this, ‘Eh?’ and look down on the ground again,