पृष्ठ 266 / 1294

He walked towards the Neva along V---- Prospect, but on the way

another idea struck him. "Why to the Neva? Would it not be better

to go somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the

things in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and

mark the spot perhaps?" And though he felt incapable of clear

judgment, the idea seemed to him a sound one. But he was not

destined to go there. For coming out of V---- Prospect towards

the square, he saw on the left a passage leading between two

blank walls to a courtyard. On the right hand, the blank

unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched far into the

court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with it for

twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the left.

Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of different

sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a low,

smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some workshop, peeped from

behind the hoarding.