Four years after my interview with Anna Martinovna, I was spending the summer at Murino, a little hamlet near Petersburg, a well-known resort of summer visitors of the middle class. The shooting was pretty decent about Murino at that time, and I used to go out with my gun almost every day. I had a companion on my expeditions, a man of the tradesman class, called Vikulov, a very sensible and good-natured fellow; but, as he said of himself, of no position whatever. This man had been simply everywhere, and everything! Nothing could astonish him, he knew everything--but he cared for nothing but shooting and wine. Well, one day we were on our way home to Murino, and we chanced to pass a solitary house, standing at the cross-roads, and enclosed by a high, close paling. It was not the first time I had seen the house, and every time it excited my curiosity. There was something about it mysterious, locked-up, grimly-dumb, something suggestive of a prison or a hospital. Nothing of it could be seen from the road but its steep, dark, red-painted roof. There was only one pair of gates in the whole fence; and these seemed fastened and never opened. No sound came from the other side of them. For all that, we felt that some one was certainly living in the house; it had not at all the air of a deserted dwelling. On the contrary, everything about it was stout, and tight, and strong, as if it would stand a siege! ‘What is that fortress?’ I asked my companion. ‘Don’t you know?’ Vikulov gave a sly wink. ‘A fine building, eh? The police-captain of these parts gets a nice little income out of it!’ ‘How’s that?’ ‘I’ll tell you. You’ve heard, I daresay, of the Flagellant dissenters--that do without priests, you know?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, it’s there that their chief mother lives.’ ‘A woman?’ ‘Yes--the mother; a mother of God, they say.’ ‘Nonsense!’ ‘I tell you, it is so. She is a strict one, they say.… A regular commander-in-chief! She rules over thousands! I’d take her, and all these mothers of God.… But what’s the use of talking?’ He called his Pegashka, a marvellous dog, with an excellent scent, but with no notion of setting. Vikulov was obliged to tie her hind paws to keep her from running so furiously.