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I wanted to keep him. "Wait a bit, Nikolay," said I, "won't you

have a drink?" And I signed to the boy to hold the door, and I

came out from behind the bar; but he darted out and down the

street to the turning at a run. I have not seen him since. Then

my doubts were at an end--it was his doing, as clear as could

be....'"

"I should think so," said Zossimov.

"Wait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for

Nikolay; they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Dmitri,

too, was arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside

out. And the day before yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a

tavern at the end of the town. He had gone there, taken the

silver cross off his neck and asked for a dram for it. They gave

it to him. A few minutes afterwards the woman went to the

cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw in the stable

adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam, stood on

a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose. The

woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. 'So that's what you

are up to!' 'Take me,' he says, 'to such-and-such a police

officer; I'll confess everything.' Well, they took him to that

police station--that is here--with a suitable escort. So they

asked him this and that, how old he is, 'twenty-two,' and so on.