The peasant, reassured, did not understand that the men here were as accustomed to the dramas and tragedies of life and were as blunted by the sight of them as hospital attendants are at the sight of death, and that the whole horror and hopelessness of his position lay just in this mechanical indifference. It seemed that if he were not to sit quietly but to get up and begin beseeching, appealing with tears for their mercy, bitterly repenting, that if he were to die of despair--it would all be shattered against blunted nerves and the callousness of custom, like waves against a rock. When the secretary finished, the president for some reason passed his hands over the table before him, looked for some time with his eyes screwed up towards the prisoner, and then asked, speaking languidly: "Prisoner at the bar, do you plead guilty to having murdered your wife on the evening of the ninth of June?" "No, sir," answered the prisoner, getting up and holding his gown over his chest. After this the court proceeded hurriedly to the examination of witnesses. Two peasant women and five men and the village policeman who had made the enquiry were questioned. All of them, mud-bespattered, exhausted with their long walk and waiting in the witnesses' room, gloomy and dispirited, gave the same evidence. They testified that Harlamov lived "well" with his old woman, like anyone else; that he never beat her except when he had had a drop; that on the ninth of June when the sun was setting the old woman had been found in the porch with her skull broken; that beside her in a pool of blood lay an axe. When they looked for Nikolay to tell him of the calamity he was not in his hut or in the streets. They ran all over the village, looking for him. They went to all the pothouses and huts, but could not find him. He had disappeared, and two days later came of his own accord to the police office, pale, with his clothes torn, trembling all over. He was bound and put in the lock-up. "Prisoner," said the president, addressing Harlamov, "cannot you explain to the court where you were during the three days following the murder?" "I was wandering about the fields. . . . Neither eating nor drinking . . . ." "Why did you hide yourself, if it was not you that committed the murder?" "I was frightened. . . . I was afraid I might be judged guilty. . . ." "Aha! . . . Good, sit down!" The last to be examined was the district doctor who had made a post-mortem on the old woman. He told the court all that he remembered of his report at the post-mortem and all that he had succeeded in thinking of on his way to the court that morning. The president screwed up his eyes at his new glossy black suit, at his foppish cravat, at his moving lips; he listened and in his mind the languid thought seemed to spring up of itself: "Everyone wears a short jacket nowadays, why has he had his made long? Why long and not short?"