doors again, he contrived to lock them, no doubt by mistake. Next he and Tchitchikoff indulged in some intimate conversation, carried on in so low a tone that not a word of it reached us until Lyenitzuin drew back the curtains and unlocked the doors, then seating himself again on the sofa and offering his hand to our hero who pressed it affectionately.

Said Tchitchikoff: “Only all this must remain secret. It is not so much the crime itself, as the scandal it often creates that proves injurious.”

“That’s so, that’s so,” returned Lyenitzuin, drooping his head completely on one side.

“How delightful to encounter a similarity of opinion!” exclaimed Tchitchikoff. “I am engaged in an affair which is both legal and illegal: in appearance it is illegal, in reality it is legal. As I need some chattels to mortgage, I do not wish to induce anyone to sell me anything which I might not pay for. If a catastrophe should occur to me, which God forbid! it would not be pleasant for others; so I have decided only to acquire sundry fugitive and dead souls, which have not yet been struck off the register, in order, at one and the same time, to benefit myself and to perform a deed of Christian charity by freeing the unfortunate proprietors from the necessity of paying the taxes for them. So we merely execute a formal deed of sale between us, as though living serfs were in question.”

“But all the same, this is a very strange proceeding,” thought Lyenitzuin; and he drew his chair back a little. “Yes, the transaction is, of a character——” he resumed aloud, but he could not make up his mind to say anything further.

“There will be no risk, for it will be kept private,” replied Tchitchikoff, “and, moreover, between honourable men——”

“But still, on the whole——”

“It is a perfectly clear transaction, and there is no trickery about it,” said Tchitchikoff, with great frankness and directness. “What the nature of the business is, we have just decided; it lies between honourable men, who have reached years of discretion and who are of good understanding apparently. It takes place in private between them.” So saying, he looked the other in the eye with a frank and ingenuous expression.

Clever as Lyenitzuin was, accomplished as he was in all methods of transacting business, he was on this occasion thrown quite out of his calculations; the more so as he had contrived, in some remarkable manner, to entangle himself in his own net. In reality, he was not at all fitted for dishonesty.

“This is an extraordinary affair!” he said to himself. “Just try to enter into an intimate friendship with the best of men, without repenting of it! There’s a puzzle for you.”

However, fate and circumstances seemed to favour Tchitchikoff in a special manner. Exactly as though with the object of rendering assistance in this difficult question, the young mistress of the house, Lyenitzuin’s wife, entered the room at that moment; she was thin, pale, and short, but dressed in Petersburg fashion, and was extremely fond of people who were comme il faut. Behind her came a nurse, bearing in her arms her first infant, a pledge of the tender love of the recently wedded couple. Tchitchikoff completely fascinated the Petersburg lady with his little skip, his agile walk, and his trick of inclining his head on one side; and he captivated the baby also.

At first the latter set up a yell, but Tchitchikoff—by dint of the words “Agu, agu, darling!” by tickling it with his finger, and by the beauty of the carnelian seal on his watch—succeeded in enticing the child into his own arms. Then he began to toss it up to the very ceiling, thereby eliciting a pleased laugh, which greatly delighted its parents. But whether from mutual satisfaction, or from some other cause, the infant suddenly misbehaved himself.