the council gave notice day by day, that the case would be finished one the morrow, for the space of ten years.

Five years ago, I passed through the town of Mirgorod. I came at a bad time. It was autumn, with its damp, melancholy weather, mud and mists. An unnatural verdure, the result of tiresome and incessant rains, covered with a watery network the fields and meadows, to which it is as well suited as youthful pranks to an old man, or roses to an old woman. The weather made a deep impression on me at that time: when it was dull, I was dull; but in spite of that, when I came to pass through Mirgorod, my heart beat violently. God, what reminiscences! I had not beheld Mirgorod for twenty years. Here then had lived, in touching friendship, two inseparable friends. And how many prominent people had died! Judge Demyan Demyanovich was already gone: Ivan Ivanovich (with the one eye) had long ceased to live. I entered the main street. All about stood poles with bundles of straw on top: some new grading was being done. Several izbás had been removed. The remnants of board and wattled fences projected sadly, here and there.

It was a festival day. I ordered my basket kibitka [hooded cart] to stop in front of the church, and entered softly that no one might turn round. To tell the truth, there was no need of this: the church was empty; there were very few people; it was evident that even the most pious feared the mud. The candles seemed strangely unpleasant in that gloomy, or, better still, sickly, light. The dim vestibule was melancholy; the long windows, with their circular panes, were bedewed with tears of rain; I retired into the vestibule, and addressed myself to a respectable old man, with grayish hair: “May I inquire if Ivan Nikiforovich is still living?” At that moment the lamp before the ikon burned up more brightly, and the light fell directly upon the face of my companion. What was my surprise, on looking more closely, to behold features with which I was acquainted! It was Ivan Nikiforovich himself! But how he had changed!

“Are you well, Ivan Nikiforovich? How old you have grown!”

“Yes, I have grown old. I have just come from Poltava to-day,” answered Ivan Nikiforovich.

“You don’t say so! you have been to Poltava in this bad weather?”

“What was to be done? that lawsuit”…

At this I sighed involuntarily.

Ivan Nikiforovich observed my sigh, and said. “Do not be troubled: I have reliable information that the case will be decided next week, and in my favor.”

I shrugged my shoulders, and went to get some news of Ivan Ivanovich.

“Ivan Ivanovich is here,” some one said to me, “in the choir.”

Then I saw a gaunt form. Was that Ivan Ivanovich? His face was covered with wrinkles, his hair was perfectly white; but the bekesha was the same as ever. After the first greetings were over, Ivan Ivanovich, turning to me with the joyous smile which always became his funnel-shaped face, said, “Have you been informed of the pleasant news?”

“What news?” I inquired.

“My case is to be decided to-morrow without fail: the court has announced it decisively.”

I sighed more deeply than before, and made haste to take my leave (for I was bound on very important business), and seated myself in my kibitka.

The lean nags known in Mirgorod as “courier’s horses” started; producing with their hoofs, which were buried in a gray mass of mud, a sound very displeasing to the ear. The rain poured in torrents upon the