“So that was settled,” continued the narrator, “I went about Moscow and bought the goods, and arranged my business properly, and at the time we’d agreed on I went to Patrìkyev’s. I walked through all the rooms, but my friend wasn’t there; so I sat down and waited, but he never came. I waited two whole hours, till at last I felt quite ashamed; so I ordered something, and ate it alone, and went away without him. Stupid-like, I’d forgotten to ask his address. ‘I shall have to wait another day,’ thought I, for I can’t get on without the pills. So I stopped another night, and next day, at the same time, I went to the tavern again. Still he wasn’t there! Well, there was nothing for it, I had to get back home. I didn’t go straight home, I went into the town, because I had bought some things—bottles, and flasks, and one thing and another.... I thought I’d manage to put up for the night there; the stove was all finished in the kitchen, and the windows were put in; so I went to the house. I’d got a peasant there for a watchman—Rodiòn his name was; there were ten carpenters in the house; they were just going to bed. I came in and told Rodiòn to heat the samovar. I noticed that he looked at me in a queer sort of way. He did what I told him, and all that, but I could see there was something wrong; I couldn’t rightly make it out.... He kept on looking at me.... I told him—‘Put down that box, and see you don’t set it too near the stove; for if it should get too warm—the Lord forbid!’... Because you see, I’d got varnish and spirit in the box.... Well, when I told him that, he just opened his eyes and stared at me. First he stared at me, and then he stared at the box. He stared, and stared, and then he went away. I sat and waited a quarter of an hour, but he didn’t come back; so I went out into the passage, and there stood the samovar, quite cold. ‘I wonder if he’s gone for water,’ I thought. I called, and called, and he didn’t answer. It was a wonderful sort of business altogether. I went and got out some dried fish (I’d brought two pounds of it from Moscow—good dried sturgeon, at eighty kopecks a pound)—I got out some fish, and cut a slice of white bread, and laid it on, and made a sort of sandwich, you know, and crossed myself, and just opened my mouth—the Lord make us truly thankful—when all of a sudden there was such a crackling and howling and blowing of whistles all round the house; and all the carpenters ran to the windows and stared like stuck pigs.... I threw down my sandwich and ran to the door, and knocked up right against a uniform. And there was Rodiòn pointing at me, and saying ‘That’s he!’ Seven or eight of them caught hold of me and began to drag me along; and I, of course, yelled and shouted, ‘Hold hard! What’s the matter?’—‘You’ll be told there!’—‘Anyway, let me dress myself,’ says I; ‘it’s autumn; it’s cold!’—‘We haven’t got any ladies!’... It was no use, they’d got me tight. I didn’t know what it was all about; I couldn’t make head or tail