is, Was she the instigator, or were the servants?"

"The servants could not have done it without her. She had the key."

This incoherent conversation lasted for a long time.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," said the foreman. "Let us sit down and
consider the matter. Take your seats," he added, seating himself in
the foreman's chair.

"These girls are rogues," said the clerk, and to sustain his opinion
that Maslova was the chief culprit, he related how one of those girls
once stole a watch from a friend of his.

As a case in point the colonel related the bolder theft of a silver
_samovar_.

"Gentlemen, let us take up the questions," said the foreman, rapping
on the table with a pencil.

They became silent. The questions submitted were:

1. Is the peasant of the village of Barkoff, district of Krapivensk,
Simon Petroff Kartinkin, thirty-three years of age, guilty of having,
with the design of taking the life of Smelkoff and robbing him,
administered to him poison in a glass of brandy, which caused the
death of Smelkoff, and of afterward robbing him of twenty-five hundred
rubles and a diamond ring?

2. Is the burgess Euphemia Ivanovna Bochkova, forty-seven years of