“What is that?” he thought, seeing the door of the stable wide open.  “Hallo, who is there?”

No answer.  Peter Nikolaevich stepped into the stable.  It was dark; the ground was soft under his feet, and the air smelt of dung; on the right side of the door were two loose boxes for a pair of grey horses.  Peter Nikolaevich stretched out his hand in their direction—­one box was empty.  He put out his foot—­the horse might have been lying down.  But his foot did not touch anything solid.  “Where could they have taken the horse?” he thought.  They certainly had not harnessed it; all the sledges stood still outside.  Peter Nikolaevich went out of the stable.

“Stepan, come here!” he called.

Stepan was the head of the workmen’s gang.  He was just stepping out of the cottage.

“Here I am!” he said, in a cheerful voice.  “Oh, is that you, Peter Nikolaevich?  Our men are coming.”

“Why is the stable door open?

“Is it?  I don’t know anything about it.  I say, Proshka, bring the lantern!”

Proshka came with the lantern.  They all went to the stable, and Stepan knew at once what had happened.

“Thieves have been here, Peter Nikolaevich,” he said.  “The lock is broken.”

“No; you don’t say so!”

“Yes, the brigands!  I don’t see ‘Mashka.’  ‘Hawk’ is here.  But ‘Beauty’ is not.  Nor yet ‘Dapple-grey.’”

Three horses had been stolen!

Peter Nikolaevich did not utter a word at first.  He only frowned and took deep breaths.

“Oh,” he said after a while.  “If only I could lay hands on them!  Who was on guard?”

“Peter.  He evidently fell asleep.”

Peter Nikolaevich called in the police, and making an appeal to all the authorities, sent his men to track the thieves.  But the horses were not to be found.

“Wicked people,” said Peter Nikolaevich.  “How could they!  I was always so kind to them.  Now, wait!  Brigands!  Brigands the whole lot of them.  I will no longer be kind.”

X

In the meanwhile the horses, the grey ones, had all been disposed of; Mashka was sold to the gipsies for eighteen roubles; Dapple-grey was exchanged for another horse, and passed over to another peasant who lived forty miles away from the estate; and Beauty died on the way.  The man who conducted the whole affair was—­Ivan Mironov.  He had been employed on the estate, and knew all the whereabouts of Peter Nikolaevich.  He wanted to get back the money he had lost, and stole the horses for that reason.

After his misfortune with the forged coupon, Ivan Mironov took to drink; and all he possessed would have gone on drink if it had not been for his wife, who locked up his clothes, the horses’ collars, and all the rest of what he would otherwise have squandered in public-houses.  In his drunken state Ivan Mironov was continually thinking, not only of the man who had wronged him, but of all the rich people who live on robbing the poor.  One day he had a drink with some peasants from the suburbs of Podolsk, and was walking home together with them.  On the way the peasants, who were completely drunk, told him they had stolen a horse from a peasant’s cottage.  Ivan Mironov got angry, and began to abuse the horse-thieves.