when the trial was to be, I went to Moscow with my wife. We got to the court quite early, before nine in the morning; and the trial wasn’t to begin till twelve; so we sat down in the porch to wait. All of a sudden up comes my apothecary. He came along dragging one foot after the other, all thin and shabby, for all the world like a beggar.—‘Where have you come from?’ I asked him.—‘That’s more than I know myself; my health’s gone to pieces; I’ve got rheumatism in both my legs; I’m half dead.’—And it was quite true; he had a cough, and couldn’t get his breath. He sat down on the step with us, and I said to him: ‘Well, well, friend! your pills have cost me something; I shall remember them, never fear!’—‘D’you think they didn’t cost _me_ anything?’ says he.—And so he told me how it had all happened: how he missed me at the tavern, and all that I told you before. ‘To this day,’ he said, ‘I haven’t got back the use of my arm, since they hit me on the shoulder when they took away the pills,’ [Illustration: “HE CAME ALONG DRAGGING ONE FOOT AFTER ANOTHER.” ] “‘But why didn’t you give up the pills?’ “‘I was afraid to; they were illegal pills. I made them for you, as a friend, because I know your temperament.’ So then I asked him how did the whole thing happen; and he told me— “‘That’s just what I can’t make out for the life of me. They tore off with me to the other end of the world; and then there came a telegram: ‘_Send him back; its the wrong man._’ So they brought me back; and I began asking at the head office what it was all about. They poked and muddled and fussed over their papers, and at last they got to the root of the whole matter. And what do you think it was? What do you suppose was the cause of it all?’ “‘How should I know? I’ve hardly got to the bottom of my own case yet.’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘it was all because of that scoundrel Lipàtkin.’ “Lipàtkin, I must tell you, is a shopkeeper in our town; he’s just a regular bloodsucker, and nothing else. So I asked him what Lipàtkin could have to do with it; and he said—