of it. And there they began dragging me along. And there were the carpenters and workmen and watchmen and doorkeepers—the Lord defend us! And why, and what it was all about, I couldn’t get the hang of it at all. ‘For mercy’s sake,’ I shrieked to them; ‘I’m a tradesman; I’m a householder; I’m a man of property; I’ve got a wife and children!’... And all the answer I got was: ‘Yes, by one of the stations in Moscow there were householders living, too, and they’d got their wives.’... When the people heard that, oho! you should have seen how they squared up to me! I saw it was a bad business; I’d got into hot water, and no mistake; and didn’t even know what for.... When they said _that_, I just felt my flesh creep.... I told them: ‘I’m innocent! May the lightning strike me dead if I.... I’ve prayed for him with tears.... I’d give my life for him!’... I was innocent before God; and yet I just shook all over! I began thinking: ‘Supposing there turns out to be some evidence! There may be something.... God knows! What will become of me then? What shall I do?’ My very inside got cold. Then I began thinking: ‘Heaven defend us! They’ll take my wife too; and it’ll kill her! She’d die if they just looked at her! What will she do when she hears about it?’ In fact, I lost my head altogether, and got so I couldn’t remember or think of anything; I just went on and on, shaking all over, and with no hat.... All of a sudden, what should come into my head: ‘Supposing it’s all a trick? There was a case in Moscow, at the Rogòzhskoye cemetery; they came in full uniform and took a lot of money, and went away; and then it turned out that they’d been only thieves.’ It just came into my head, and it made my very heart jump; and I said to myself: ‘Why, what a silly fellow I am to let them trick me like that! I left a lot of money in the house—over seven hundred roubles.... What’s the use of being such a fool?’ And directly that came into my head, I thought: ‘I’ll see if I can’t get myself out of the mess my own way;’ and I think, gentlemen, you can see for yourselves that I’m not much like a baby in arms.”... (The narrator here drew up his gigantic form to its full height, squared back his colossal shoulders, and, rolling up his sleeve, held out for inspection a mighty fist.)... “I think I’ve got what you may call means of defence. And here, at a time like that, I seemed all at once to gather up strength all over my body. I felt it rush into my neck and my chest and my legs; and into my arm there went such an iron strength of will that I just squared up, and made them see sparks enough to last their life-time; and hit and hammered, and banged and boxed, and punched their heads, and flattened their noses, and squeezed their ribs ... and when I looked round there was an empty space all about me, and there I stood alone in my shirt, like Mìnin and Pozhàrsky[53] in the Red Square; and all the people kicking and wriggling about like fish thrown up on