eating-house of Vaviloff, with its bent roof overgrown with moss, leaned against one of the brick walls of the factory, and looked like a large parasite clinging to it. The Captain was thinking that they would soon be putting up new houses to replace the old buildings as well. “They will have to destroy the doss- house,” he reflected. “One will have to look for another, but such a cheap and convenient one is not to be found. It seems a great pity to have to leave a place to which one has grown so used, only because some merchant has got it into his head to manufacture candles and soap.” And the Captain felt that if he could only make the life of such a foe miserable, even for a while, oh! with what pleasure he would do it!

Yesterday, Ivan Andreyevitch Petunikoff was in the doss-house yard with his son and an architect. They measured up the yard and put some small wooden sticks here and there which, after the exit of Petunikoff and at the order of the Captain, Meteor pulled out and threw away.

The Captain could still see the merchant in front of him, small, dry, in a long garment like a frock coat, a velvet cap, and high, dazzlingly shining boots. He had a bony face with prominent cheekbones, a wedge-shaped grayish beard, and a high forehead seamed with wrinkles, from beneath which shone two narrow, half-closed, alert and observant gray eyes…a sharp, gristly nose, a small mouth with thin lips…altogether an appearance which was rapaciously pious and respectably wicked.

“Cursed cross-breed of fox and pig!” swore the Captain under his breath, recalling his first meeting with Petunikoff. The merchant had come with one of the town councilors to buy the house, and, seeing the Captain, asked of his companion:

“Is this piece of junk that lodger of yours?”

And from that day, a year and a half ago, there had been a keen competition among the two as to which could insult the hardest. Last night there had been a “slight skirmish with hot words,” as the Captain called his conversations with Petunikoff. Having dismissed the architect, the merchant approached the Captain.

“Still squatting there?” he asked, putting his hand to his cap, so that one would have hesitated to say whether it was to adjust it or in way of a greeting.

“Still knocking about?” asked the Captain in the same tone, with a jerk of his chin which brought his beard into movement, and a careless person might have taken it for a nod, or for an attempt on his part to move his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“Well, having plenty of money, I can knock about the world. Money asks to be spent, so I am just giving it a free hand,” the merchant teased the Captain, throwing a cunning glance at him.

“So it’s you who serve the money, not the money you,” Kuvalda retorted, fighting the desire to punch the merchant’s belly.

“Isn’t it all the same? Money puts everything right, but when you have none,”…and the merchant looked at the Captain with feigned and impudent compassion. The latter’s upper lip curled up and exposed large, wolfish teeth.

“With brains and a conscience, it is possible to live without it. Money usually comes to people just when their consciences begin to wither…the less conscience the more money!”

“Just so; but then there also are men who have neither money nor conscience.”

“That’s what you were like when you were young?” asked Kuvalda innocently. The other man’s nostrils twitched. Ivan Andreyevitch sighed, half closed his eyes and said:

“Oh! When I was young I had to undergo many a hardship…”