While Nozdreff was rattling on in this strain, Tchitchikoff wiped his eyes several times, with a desire to convince himself whether he was listening to all this in a dream. The manufacture of counterfeit bank- notes; the abduction of the governor’s daughter; the death of the procurator, of which he was said to be the cause; the arrival of a governor-general—all this produced a tolerably violent alarm in his breast. “Well, if it has come to this,” he thought to himself, “there’s no time to waste; I must get away from here as speedily as possible.”

He then got rid of Nozdreff as promptly as he could, summoned Selifan at once, and ordered him to be ready at daybreak, so that they might leave town at six o’clock on the next morning, without fail; everything was to be thoroughly inspected, the britchka greased, and so forth, and so forth. Selifan ejaculated, “I obey you, Pavel Ivanovitch!” but all the same he halted for some time motionless at the door. Our hero then immediately commanded Petrushka to pull out his trunk from under the bed—where it was covered with dust—and together they immediately set to work packing it with socks, shirts, linen, both clean and soiled, boot-jacks, and calendars, all of which were thrown in as they came to hand, without much attempt at arrangement. Our hero wanted to be ready that evening without fail, in order that no delay might occur on the following morning. After standing for a couple of minutes at the door, Selifan had slowly left the room. Slowly, as slowly as it is possible to conceive of, he descended the staircase, imprinting traces of his wet boots on the well-worn steps, and in his surprise he scratched the back of his head with his hand for a long time thereafter.