"The message is your own addition," the visitor observed curtly. "There's no message at all. But I certainly do know Verhovensky. I left him in the X. province, ten days ahead of us." Stepan Trofimovitch mechanically offered his hand and motioned him to sit down. He looked at me, he looked at Liputin, and then as though suddenly recollecting himself sat down himself, though he still kept his hat and stick in his hands without being aware of it. "Bah, but you were going out yourself! I was told that you were quite knocked up with work." "Yes, I'm ill, and you see, I meant to go for a walk, I..." Stepan Trofimovitch checked himself, quickly flung his hat and stick on the sofa and--turned crimson. Meantime, I was hurriedly examining the visitor. He was a young man, about twenty-seven, decently dressed, well made, slender and dark, with a pale, rather muddy-coloured face and black lustreless eyes. He seemed rather thoughtful and absent-minded, spoke jerkily and ungrammatically, transposing words in rather a strange way, and getting muddled if he attempted a sentence of any length. Liputin was perfectly aware of Stepan Trofimovitch's alarm, and was obviously pleased at it. He sat down in a wicker chair which he dragged almost into the middle of the room, so as to be at an equal distance between his host and the visitor, who had installed themselves on sofas on opposite sides of the room. His sharp eyes darted inquisitively from one corner of the room to another. "It's.... a long while since I've seen Petrusha.... You met abroad?" Stepan Trofimovitch managed to mutter to the visitor. "Both here and abroad." "Alexey Nilitch has only just returned himself after living four years abroad," put in Liputin. "He has been travelling to perfect himself in his speciality and has come to us because he has good reasons to expect a job on the building of our railway bridge, and he's now waiting for an answer about it. He knows the Drozdovs and Lizaveta Nikolaevna, through Pyotr Stepanovitch." The engineer sat, as it were, with a ruffled air, and listened with awkward impatience. It seemed to me that he was angry about something. "He knows Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch too." "Do you know Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch?" inquired Stepan Trofimovitch. "I know him too." "It's... it's a very long time since I've seen Petrusha, and... I feel I have so little right to call myself a father... _c'est le mot;_ I... how did you leave him?" "Oh, yes, I left him... he comes himself," replied Mr. Kirillov, in haste to be rid of the question again. He certainly was angry.