“Good heavens! Who is it? You’re my salvation, Kuzma Kuzmitch,” faltered Mitya.

“He doesn’t live here, and he’s not here just now. He is a peasant, he does business in timber. His name is Lyagavy. He’s been haggling with Fyodor Pavlovitch for the last year, over your copse at Tchermashnya. They can’t agree on the price, maybe you’ve heard? Now he’s come back again and is staying with the priest at Ilyinskoe, about twelve versts from the Volovya station. He wrote to me, too, about the business of the copse, asking my advice. Fyodor Pavlovitch means to go and see him, himself. So if you were to be beforehand with Fyodor Pavlovitch and to make Lyagavy the offer you’ve made me, he might possibly …”

“A brilliant idea!” Mitya interrupted ecstatically. “He’s the very man, it would just suit him. He’s haggling with him for it, being asked too much, and here he would have all the documents entitling him to the property itself. Ha-ha-ha!”

And Mitya suddenly went off into his short, wooden laugh, startling Samsonov.

“How can I thank you, Kuzma Kuzmitch?” cried Mitya effusively.

“Don’t mention it,” said Samsonov, inclining his head.

“But you don’t know, you’ve saved me. Oh, it was a true presentiment brought me to you.… So now to this priest!”

“No need of thanks.”

“I’ll make haste and fly there. I’m afraid I’ve overtaxed your strength. I shall never forget it. It’s a Russian says that, Kurma Kuzmitch, a R-r-russian!”

“To be sure!”

Mitya seized his hand to press it, but there was a malignant gleam in the old man’s eye. Mitya drew back his hand, but at once blamed himself for his mistrustfulness.

“It’s because he’s tired,” he thought.

“For her sake! For her sake, Kuzma Kuzmitch! You understand that it’s for her,” he cried, his voice ringing through the room. He bowed, turned sharply round, and with the same long stride walked to the door without looking back. He was trembling with delight.

“Everything was on the verge of ruin and my guardian angel saved me,” was the thought in his mind. And if such a business man as Samsonov (a most worthy old man, and what dignity!) had suggested this course, then… then success was assured. He would fly off immediately. “I will be back before night, I shall be back at night and the thing is done. Could the old man have been laughing at me?” exclaimed Mitya, as he strode towards his lodging. He could, of course, imagine nothing but that the advice was practical “from such a business man” with an understanding of the business, with an understanding of this Lyagavy (curious surname!). Or—the old man was laughing at him.

Alas! the second alternative was the correct one. Long afterwards, when the catastrophe had happened, old Samsonov himself confessed, laughing, that he had made a fool of the “captain.” He was a cold, spiteful and sarcastic man, liable to violent antipathies. Whether it was the “captain’s” excited face, or the foolish conviction of the “rake and spendthrift,” that he, Samsonov, could be taken in by such a cock- and-bull story as his scheme, or jealousy over Grushenka, in whose name this “scapegrace” had rushed in on him with such a tale to get money—which worked on the old man I can’t tell. But, at the instant when Mitya stood before him, feeling his legs grow weak under him, and frantically exclaiming that he