a crowd assembled in front of the bailiff’s cottage.  Ivan Mironov was brought out and subjected to a close examination.  Stepan Pelageushkine, a tall, stooping man with long arms, an aquiline nose, and a gloomy face was the first to put questions to him.  Stepan had terminated his military service, and was of a solitary turn of mind.  When he had separated from his father, and started his own home, he had his first experience of losing a horse.  After that he worked for two years in the mines, and made money enough to buy two horses.  These two had been stolen by Ivan Mironov.

“Tell me where my horses are!” shouted Stepan, pale with fury, alternately looking at the ground and at Ivan Mironov’s face.

Ivan Mironov denied his guilt.  Then Stepan aimed so violent a blow at his face that he smashed his nose and the blood spurted out.

“Tell the truth, I say, or I’ll kill you!”

Ivan Mironov kept silent, trying to avoid the blows by stooping.  Stepan hit him twice more with his long arm.  Ivan Mironov remained silent, turning his head backwards and forwards.

“Beat him, all of you!” cried the bailiff, and the whole crowd rushed upon Ivan Mironov.  He fell without a word to the ground, and then shouted,—­“Devils, wild beasts, kill me if that’s what you want!  I am not afraid of you!”

Stepan seized a stone out of those that had been collected for the purpose, and with a heavy blow smashed Ivan Mironov’s head.

XV

Ivan Mironov’s murderers were brought to trial, Stepan Pelageushkine among them.  He had a heavier charge to answer than the others, all the witnesses having stated that it was he who had smashed Ivan Mironov’s head with a stone.  Stepan concealed nothing when in court.  He contented himself with explaining that, having been robbed of his two last horses, he had informed the police.  Now it was comparatively easy at that time to trace the horses with the help of professional thieves among the gipsies.  But the police officer would not even permit him, and no search had been ordered.

“Nothing else could be done with such a man.  He has ruined us all.”

“But why did not the others attack him.  It was you alone who broke his head open.”

“That is false.  We all fell upon him.  The village agreed to kill him.  I only gave the final stroke.  What is the use of inflicting unnecessary sufferings on a man?”

The judges were astonished at Stepan’s wonderful coolness in narrating the story of his crime—­how the peasants fell upon Ivan Mironov, and how he had given the final stroke.  Stepan actually did not see anything particularly revolting in this murder.  During his military service he had been ordered on one occasion to shoot a soldier, and, now with regard to Ivan Mironov, he saw nothing loathsome in it.  “A man shot is a dead man—­that’s all.  It was him to-day, it might be me to-morrow,”