After two days I arrived at the Stanitsa Aigùnskaya, where the conference was to be held. I had been wondering all this while how my meeting with the _prìstav_ would go off, and he, too, seemed to have had the same anxiety; for I had scarcely awakened next morning when a Cossack came to the _zèmskaya kvàrtira_, where I and the other census-takers had slept, and announced that the _prìstav_ wished to speak to the Censor of Shilkinskaya. I told the man to say I would come as soon as I could, made a leisurely toilet, and had my breakfast. But in a short time appeared a fat man of about fifty, in the uniform of a police official, who introduced himself as “Head-of-the-census-district-of-so-and-so Bìbikov”—my _prìstav_, in fact. I on my side announced myself as “Census-taker Deutsch,” and we chatted together most peaceably, as if we had never fallen out in our lives. The tormented man at once poured out his troubles to me. He could not manage his task at all, and confessed that he could not make head or tail of the divers instructions, orders, and circulars of the various authorities; neither did he know how to proceed with the examination of lists and drawing up of the report for his district. And then there were thirty census-takers worrying him, some of whom had come a whole week’s journey from their homes; naturally they wanted to get back, and they were pressing him to release them, but he could not accede to their wishes, as all the lists seemed to him inadequate. His moving tale ended with a petition that I would stand by him; he knew how well I had managed things in my division, and I was the only man who could help him to bring this difficult task to a satisfactory conclusion. Several of the other census-takers, too, urged me to take the thing in hand; and as I was interested to see how the work had been started from the beginning, and what a superintendent like the _prìstav_ was expected to do, after some hesitation I consented, for which my quondam enemy thanked me effusively. When we entered the official building the office was full of people. These were the census-takers, among whom were all kinds of persons—clerks, medical men, schoolmasters, and a great many Cossacks. Directly they saw the _prìstav_ they crowded round him, begging him to try and finish up with them. “Just look at them!” said the _prìstav_; “that’s how it goes on every day. It’s enough to drive one mad!” I made them give me the papers, and tried to master their contents. As I had already guessed, the business was not really so difficult and puzzling as it had appeared to the poor police official; but it was work that did not come within his scope, and he had no notion how to tackle it. At the end of a few hours I had things in train, and could show him what he had to do.