“It does not matter,” he thought, “the horse will go of itself, it knows the way. I might have a little sleep now.... Before the funeral or the requiem it would be as well to get a little rest....” The turner closed his eyes and dozed. A little later he heard the horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him something dark like a hut or a haystack.... He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep. He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew how things should be done. “A requiem, brothers, for my old woman,” he said. “The priest should be told....” “Oh, all right, all right; lie down,” a voice cut him short. “Pavel Ivanitch!” the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doctor before him. “Your honor, benefactor!” He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doctor, but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him. “Your honor, where are my legs, where are my arms!” “Say good-by to your arms and legs.... They’ve been frozen off. Come, come!... What are you crying for? You’ve lived your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had sixty years of it--that’s enough for you!...” “I am grieving.... Graciously forgive me! If I could have another five or six years!...” “What for?” “The horse isn’t mine, I must give it back.... I must bury my old woman.... How quickly it is all ended in this world! Your honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of the best! I’ll turn you croquet balls....” The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand. It was all over with the turner. ON OFFICIAL DUTY THE deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were going to an inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they were overtaken by a snowstorm; they spent a long time going round and round, and arrived, not at midday, as they had intended, but in the evening when it was dark. They put up for the night at the Zemstvo hut. It so happened that it was in this hut that the dead body was lying--the corpse of the Zemstvo insurance agent, Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three days before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot himself, to the great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary. In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And meanwhile the old village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp. There was a strong smell of paraffin. “Who are you?” asked the doctor.