At the turning into the main avenue he hears hurried footsteps, and
someone asks him, in a hissing voice: "Is that you, Timofey? Where
is Mitka?"

And after running the whole length of the main avenue he notices a
little dim light in the darkness. The nearer he gets to the light
the more frightened he is and the stronger his foreboding of evil.

"It looks as though the light were in the church," he thinks. "And
how can it have come there? Save me and have mercy on me, Queen of
Heaven! And that it is."

The watchman stands for a minute before the broken window and looks
with horror towards the altar. . . . A little wax candle which the
thieves had forgotten to put out flickers in the wind that bursts
in at the window and throws dim red patches of light on the vestments
flung about and a cupboard overturned on the floor, on numerous
footprints near the high altar and the altar of offerings.

A little time passes and the howling wind sends floating over the
churchyard the hurried uneven clangs of the alarm-bell. . . .


IN THE COURT

AT the district town of N. in the cinnamon-coloured government house
in which the Zemstvo, the sessional meetings of the justices of the
peace, the Rural Board, the Liquor Board, the Military Board, and
many others sit by turns, the Circuit Court was in session on one
of the dull days of autumn. Of the above-mentioned cinnamon-coloured