fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, but the rest of the time he was always sighing, and continually dosing the old lady with cherrybay drops.  This doctor ran up at once, fumigated the room with burnt feathers, and when the old lady opened her eyes, promptly offered her a wineglass of the hallowed drops on a silver tray.  The old lady took them, but began again at once in a tearful voice complaining of the dog, of Gavrila, and of her fate, declaring that she was a poor old woman, and that every one had forsaken her, no one pitied her, every one wished her dead.  Meanwhile the luckless Mumu had gone on barking, while Gerasim tried in vain to call her away, from the fence.  “There . . . there . . . again,” groaned the old lady, and once more she turned up the whites of her eyes.  The doctor whispered to a maid, she rushed into the outer hall, and shook Stepan, he ran to wake Gavrila, Gavrila in a fury ordered the whole household to get up.

Gerasim turned round, saw lights and shadows moving in the windows, and with an instinct of coming trouble in his heart, put Mumu under his arm, ran into his garret, and locked himself in.  A few minutes later five men were banging at his door, but feeling the resistance of the bolt, they stopped.  Gavrila ran up in a fearful state of mind, and ordered them all to wait there and watch till morning.  Then he flew off himself to the maids’ quarter, and through an old companion, Liubov Liubimovna, with whose assistance he used to steal tea, sugar, and other groceries and to falsify the accounts, sent word to the mistress that the dog had unhappily run back from somewhere, but that to-morrow she should be killed, and would the mistress be so gracious as not to be angry and to overlook it.  The old lady would probably not have been so soon appeased, but the doctor had in his haste given her fully forty drops instead of twelve.  The strong dose of narcotic acted; in a quarter of an hour the old lady was in a sound and peaceful sleep; while Gerasim was lying with a white face on his bed, holding Mumu’s mouth tightly shut.

Next morning the lady woke up rather late.  Gavrila was waiting till she should be awake, to give the order for a final assault on Gerasim’s stronghold, while he prepared himself to face a fearful storm.  But the storm did not come off.  The old lady lay in bed and sent for the eldest of her dependent companions.

“Liubov Liubimovna,” she began in a subdued weak voice—­she was fond of playing the part of an oppressed and forsaken victim; needless to say, every one in the house was made extremely uncomfortable at such times—­ “Liubov Liubimovna, you see my position; go, my love, to Gavrila Andreitch, and talk to him a little.  Can he really prize some wretched cur above the repose—­the very life—­of his mistress?  I could not bear to think so,” she added, with an expression of deep feeling.  “Go, my love; be so good as to go to Gavrila Andreitch for me.”