“The servants could not have done it without her.  She had the key.”

This incoherent conversation lasted for a long time.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said the foreman.  “Let us sit down and consider the matter.  Take your seats,” he added, seating himself in the foreman’s chair.

“These girls are rogues,” said the clerk, and to sustain his opinion that Maslova was the chief culprit, he related how one of those girls once stole a watch from a friend of his.

As a case in point the colonel related the bolder theft of a silver samovar.

“Gentlemen, let us take up the questions,” said the foreman, rapping on the table with a pencil.

They became silent.  The questions submitted were: 

1.  Is the peasant of the village of Barkoff, district of Krapivensk, Simon Petroff Kartinkin, thirty-three years of age, guilty of having, with the design of taking the life of Smelkoff and robbing him, administered to him poison in a glass of brandy, which caused the death of Smelkoff, and of afterward robbing him of twenty-five hundred rubles and a diamond ring?

2.  Is the burgess Euphemia Ivanovna Bochkova, forty-seven years of age, guilty of the crime mentioned in the first question?

3.  Is the burgess Katherine Michaelovna Maslova, twenty-seven years of age, guilty of the crime mentioned in the first question?

4.  If the prisoner Euphemia Bochkova is not guilty of the crime set forth in the first question, is she not guilty of secretly stealing, while employed in the Hotel Mauritania, on the 17th day of January, 188-, twenty-five hundred rubles from the trunk of the merchant Smelkoff, to which end she opened the trunk in the hotel with a key brought and fitted by her?

The foreman read the first question.

“Well, gentlemen, what do you think?”

This question was quickly answered.  They all agreed to answer “Guilty.”  The only one that dissented was an old laborer, whose answer to all questions was “Not guilty.”

The foreman thought that he did not understand the questions and proceeded to explain that from all the facts it was evident that Kartinkin and Bochkova were guilty, but the laborer answered that he did understand them, and that he thought that they ought to be charitable.  “We are not saints ourselves,” he said, and did not change his opinion.

The second question, relating to Bochkova, after many arguments and elucidations, was answered “Not guilty,” because there was no clear proof that she participated in the poisoning—­a fact on which her lawyer put much stress.

The merchant, desiring to acquit Maslova, insisted that Bochkova was the author of the conspiracy.  Many of the jurymen agreed with him, but the foreman, desiring to conform strictly to the law, said that there was no foundation for the charge of poisoning against her.  After a lengthy argument the foreman’s opinion triumphed.