He sent me into the town to fetch the police, and himself sat down on the edge of the pit, letting his feet hang over, wrapping his worn overcoat closely round him. Having informed the police of the suicide, I ran back quickly, but in the meantime the chorister had drunk the dead man's vodka, and came to meet me, waving the empty bottle. "This is what ruined him," he cried, and furiously dashing the bottle to the ground, smashed it to atoms. The town constable had followed me. He looked into the pit, took off his hat, and crossing himself indecisively, asked the singer: "Who may you be?" "That is not your business." The policeman reflected, and then asked more politely: "What account do you give of yourself, then? Here is a dead man, and here are you, drunk!" "I have been drunk for twenty years!" said the singer proudly, striking his chest with the palm of his hand. I felt sure that they would arrest him for drinking the vodka. People came rushing from the town; a severe-looking police inspector cartie in a cab, descended into the pit, and, lifting aside the overcoat of the suicide, looked into his face. "Who saw him first?" "I," said Mitropolski. The inspector looked at him and drawled ominously: "A-ah! Congratulations, my lord!" Sightseers began to gather round; there were a dozen or so of people. Panting, excited, they surrounded the pit and looked down into it, and one of them cried: "It is a _chinovnik_ who lives in our street; I know him!" The singer, swaying, with his cap off, stood before the inspector, and argued with him inarticulately, shouting something indistinctly. Then the inspector struck him in the chest. He reeled and sat down, and the policeman without haste took some string from his pocket and bound the hands of the singer. He folded them meekly behind his back, as if he were used to this procedure. Then the inspector began to shout angrily to the crowd: "Be off, now!" After this there came another, older policeman, with moist, red eyes, his mouth hanging open from weariness, and he took hold of the end of the cord with which the singer was bound, and gently led him into the town. I also went away dejected from the field. Through my memory, like a dull echo, rang the avenging words: "Woe to the town Ariel!" And before my eyes rose that depressing spectacle of the policeman slowly drawing the string from the pocket of his ulster, and the awe-inspiring prophet meekly folding his red, hairy hands behind his back, and crossing his wrists as if he were used to it. I soon heard that the prophet had been sent out of the town. And after him, Kleshtchkov disappeared; he had married well, and had gone to live in a district where a harness-maker's workshop had been opened. I had praised his singing so warmly to my master that he said one day: "I must go and hear him!" And so one night he sat at a little table opposite to me, raising his brows in astonishment, his eyes wide open.