He also unburdened himself to his family. According to his own account, he heard of the murder at four o’clock in the morning, after which he could not sleep, but “just sat and shivered,” as he says. At eight o’clock he went to his sister, a woman of some education, who was married to Agafonov, an official of the Commissariat of Justice. Here is what his sister deposes:--“He came in without saying a word, looking dreadfully upset and exhausted. I noticed it at once and asked him: ‘What is the matter with you?’ He requested me to close the door, sat down and kept silent, his face convulsed with terror and his body trembling violently. I again asked him: ‘What ails you?’ I thought that some great misfortune had overtaken him. He still maintained an obstinate silence, although it evidently caused him suffering. The thought occurred to me: ‘Maybe they have killed Nicholas.’ I asked him if it was so. My brother answered something like: ‘It is all over,’ and in reply to my further questions he said that all had been killed--_i.e._, the Tsar himself and all his family and all who had been with them excepting their little scullion. I do not recall my asking him if he had taken part in the murder, but I remember his saying that he had seen the spectacle of the murder with his own eyes. He related how this sight had so shaken him that he could not hold out, and every now and then had gone out of the house into the open air, adding that his comrades in the guard had upbraided him for it, suspecting him of feeling repentance or pity.... I then understood him to mean that he had been himself in the room or so near that he could see the actual murder with his own eyes.” Here are two corroborative depositions of interest. When Yakimov had left his sister, she immediately ran out to her husband’s office. An investigating magistrate named Tomashevsky was in the next room, and saw her standing, weeping, and whispering to her husband. When she had gone, Agafonov came and told this same story in confidence to Tomashevsky. Agafonov saw Yakimov later in the day, and relates what transpired:--“Yakimov came to take leave. [He was going to the front.] I was struck by his appearance: the face pinched, the pupils distended, the lower lip quivering when he spoke. The mere sight of him convinced me that all that my wife had said was true. Clearly, Anatoly had passed through some terrible experience during the night.... I only asked him: ‘How are things?’ He replied, It is all over’” (_vsi yóncheno_).