“No; honest, sell them to me!” And Mishka spoke in a lower, more pleading tone.

“All right, buy them. What will you give?”

“Take.…What’s my share?”

“A ruble, twenty.”

“And what do you want for them?”

“One ruble.”

“Make it less, for a friend.”

“You thumping blockhead, you! What the devil do you want with them?”

“Never mind; you sell them to me.”

Finally, the deal was closed, and the clasps went to Mishka for ninety kopecks.

He stopped, and began turning them over in his hands, bending his tousled head, knitting his brows, and scrutinizing the two silver pieces.

“Hang ’em on your nose,” Syomka advised him.

“What for?” Mishka replied seriously. “No. I’ll take them back to the old woman. ‘Here, Granny,’ I’ll say to her. ‘We carried these things off with us by mistake, so you put them back again where they belong,’ I’ll say, ‘on that book there.’ Only you’ve torn out a piece of stuff with them; what about that?”

“Are you really going to take them back, you devil?” Syomka gaped in amazement.

“Why not? You see, such a book—it ought to be whole. It isn’t right to tear pieces off of it. And the old woman, too, she’ll be hurt.…And she’ll be dead soon.…So I’ll just…You wait for me a minute, mates. I’ll run back.”

And before we could stop him, he strode off, disappearing round the corner.

“What a wood-louse! The dirty rotter!” Syomka stormed, after the occurrence and its possible consequences had come home to him. And cursing furiously at every third word, he began persuading me:

“Let’s go, hurry up. He’ll get us in bad.…He’s probably sitting there now, with his hands tied behind him, and the old witch must have sent for the police already!…That’s what it is to have dealings with such a nasty fellow. Why, he’ll get you in jail for a trifle! But just think, what a scoundrel! What dirty beast would act this way to a comrade? Good Lord! What people are like nowadays! Come on, you devil, what are you sticking around for? Waiting for him? All right, wait, and the devil take you all—crooks! Faugh! Damn you! Not coming? All right, then…”

Calling hideous curses down on me, Syomka poked me furiously in the ribs, and strode off rapidly.

I wanted to know what was happening between Mishka and our former employer, and walked quietly towards her house. I did not think that I would run into any danger or unpleasantness.

And I was not mistaken.

As I approached the house, I looked through a crack in the fence, and saw and heard what follows: