So Pavel wrote. Lunev read the verse and before his eyes he seemed to see the lively face of his comrade; now restless, with bright bold eyes, now sad and darkened, concentrated on one thought. In his verses Pavel told again how he wandered poor and alone in a foreign town, receiving no greeting or friendly word. But when he was at the point of death from longing and want, then he found kind people, who bade him welcome to their hearth, where he drank new life: "Drank from their words that were radiant with love," words that fell upon his heart like sparks of fire: "Hope flamed again in the heart of the hopeless, Songs of rejoicing resound through his soul." Lunev read to the end, and then pushed the paper impatiently aside. "Always rhyming, always with some crank in your head! Wait a little! these kind people of yours will handle you presently! kind people!" A scornful smile drew his mouth awry. Then suddenly he thought as though with a new soul. "Suppose I went there? Just went and said: 'Here I am, forgive me?'" "Why?" he asked himself the next moment, and he ended with the gloomy words: "They'll turn me out." He read the verses again with sorrow and envy, and fell into a new meditation on the girl. "She's proud. She'll just look at me, and well; I should go away the way I'd come." In the same newspaper among the official information, he found that the case against Vyera Kapitanovna for robbery would be tried in court on September 23rd. A malicious feeling flared up in him, and in his thought he addressed Pavel: "Make verses do you? and she--she's in prison!" "Lord be merciful to me a sinner," murmured Terenti with a sigh, and shook his head sadly. Then he looked at his nephew who was turning over his paper and called to him: "Ilya!" "Well?" "Petrusha----" the hunchback smiled sadly and stopped. "Well--what?" "He has robbed me!" Terenti explained in a slow, conscience-stricken voice, and smiled again in a melancholy way. "Serves you right!" "He's done me fairly!" "How much did you steal altogether?" asked Ilya quietly. His uncle pushed his chair back from the table, and with his hands on his knees began to twist his fingers. "Say, ten thousand?" asked Lunev again. The hunchback turned his head quickly, and said in a long-drawn tone of astonishment. "T--e--n?" Then he waved his hand and added: "Whatever's got into your head? good Lord! Altogether it was three thousand seven hundred and a little over, and you think ten thousand--ten; you've fine ideas!" "Jeremy had more than ten thousand," said Ilya, laughing mockingly. "That's a lie!" "Not a bit; he told me himself." "Why, could he reckon money?" "As well as you and Petrusha." Terenti fell into deep thought, and his head sank again on his breast. "How much has Petrusha to pay you still?" "About seven hundred," answered Terenti, with a sigh. "Well, well, more than ten." Lunev was silent; he hated the sight of his uncle's troubled, disappointed face.