they carry out my will, so will my fatherly blessing be with them, but should they not so do, which God forbid, then will they be overtaken by my paternal curse that cannot be averted, now and for ever, amen!’ Harlov raised the deed high above his head. Anna at once dropped on her knees and touched the ground with her forehead; her husband, too, doubled up after her. ‘Well, and you?’ Harlov turned to Evlampia. She crimsoned all over, and she too bowed to the earth; Zhitkov bent his whole carcase forward. ‘Sign!’ cried Harlov, pointing his forefinger to the bottom of the deed. ‘Here: “I thank and accept, Anna. I thank and accept, Evlampia!”’ Both daughters rose, and signed one after another. Sletkin rose too, and was feeling after the pen, but Harlov moved him aside, sticking his middle finger into his cravat, so that he gasped. The silence lasted a moment. Suddenly Martin Petrovitch gave a sort of sob, and muttering, ‘Well, now it’s all yours!’ moved away. His daughters and son-in-law looked at one another, went up to him and began kissing him just above his elbow. His shoulder they could not reach. XIII The police captain read the real formal document, the deed of gift, drawn up by Martin Petrovitch. Then he went out on to the steps with the attorney and explained what had taken place to the crowd assembled at the gates, consisting of the witnesses required by law and other people from the neighbourhood, Harlov’s peasants, and a few house-serfs. Then began the ceremony of the new owners entering into possession. They came out, too, upon the steps, and the police captain pointed to them when, slightly scowling with one eyebrow, while his careless face assumed for an instant a threatening air, he exhorted the crowd to ‘subordination.’ He might well have dispensed with these exhortations: a less unruly set of countenances than those of the Harlov peasants, I imagine, have never existed in creation. Clothed in thin smocks and torn sheepskins, but very tightly girt round their waists, as is always the peasants’ way on solemn occasions, they stood motionless as though cut out of stone, and whenever the police captain uttered any exclamation such as, ‘D’ye hear, you brutes? d’ye understand, you devils?’ they suddenly bowed all at once, as though at the word of command. Each of these ‘brutes and devils’ held his cap tight in both hands, and never took his eyes off the window, where Martin Petrovitch’s figure was visible. The witnesses themselves were hardly less awed. ‘Is any impediment known to you,’ the police captain roared at them, ‘against the entrance into possession of these the sole and legitimate heirs and daughters of Martin Petrovitch Harlov?’ All the witnesses seemed to huddle together at once. ‘Do you know any, you devils?’ the police captain shouted again. ‘We know nothing, your excellency,’ responded sturdily a little old man, marked with small-pox, with a clipped beard and whiskers, an old soldier.