'Here is every evidence of murder. Since, however, no one on earth could bring himself to kill our doctor, it obviously cannot be murder and the accumulated clues must derive from pure coincidence. We must .tSsume that the doctor stumbled into the gulley in the dark and died from the fall.'
With this opinion the whole town concurred. The doctor was buried, and there was no more talk of death by violence. The very existence of someone base and foul enough to murder him seemed improbable. After all, even vileness does have its limits, doesn't it?
But then suddenly, believe it or not, chance revealed the murderer. A certain scallywag, who had often stood trial and was known for his diuolute life, was seen in an inn with a snuff-box and watch, once the doctor's, which he was using to obtain drink. When questioned he showed embarrassment and told some blatant lie. His home was searched, and in his bed were found a shirt with blood-stained sleeves and the doctor's lancet in a golden case. What more clues were needed? They put the villain in prison, and the townsfolk were perturbed while claiming it as 'most unlikely' and 'impossible'.
'Look, there may have been a mistake. Clues can be misleading, after all.'
The murderer stubbornly denied his complicity in court. Everything was against him. His guilt was as plain as that this soil is black, but the magistrates had apparently taken leave of their senses. Ten times they weighed every clue, viewing the witnesses with suspicion, blushing, drinking water.
They began trying the case early in the morning, and did not finish until evening.
The presiding magistrate addressed the murderer. 'Prisoner in the dock, the court finds you guilty of the murder of Doctor Such-and- Such and sentences you '
The chief magistrate was about to say 'to death', but dropped the paper on which the sentence had been written and wiped off cold sweat.
'No,' he shouted. 'May God punish me if this judgement is wrong, but I swear he is not guilty. That anyone would dare kill our friend the doctor I do not concede. Man cannot sink so low.'
'No indeed,' the other magistrates concurred.
'No,' echoed the crowd. 'Let him go.'
They let the murderer go scot free, and not a soul reproached the court with a miscarriage of justice. According to my grandmother God forgave all the townwnsfolk their sins because of their great faith in man. He rejoices when folk believe that man is His image and likeness, and He is grieved if men forget their human dignity and judge their fellows to be worse than dogs. Even if the acquittal should harm the townwnsfolk, yet just consider how beneficent an influence their faith in man has had on them. That faith is no dead formula, now is it? It educatcs us in noble sentiments, always prompting us to love and respcct everyonc. Everyonc—that's what's so important.
Michacl Karlovich ended. My neighbour wanted to offer some objection, but thc hcad gardener made a gesture signifying a dislike of all objections, and went over to the carts to continue supervising the loading with an expression of great dignity on his face.
PATCH
A hungry she-wolf got up to go hunting. Her three cubs were all fast asleep, huddled together in each other's warmth. She gave them a lick and went off.
It was already March—spring in fact—but at night trees cracked in the cold as though it was still December. Stick out your tongue and it felt as if it had been bitten. The wolf was in bad health and very wary—the least sound made her start. She feared that someone might hurt her cubs while she was away from home. She was scared by the scent of men and horses, by tree stumps, wood piles, and by the dark road with animal droppings on it. She seemed to sense men standing in the darkness behind the trees and dogs howling beyond the wood somewhere.
She was quite old and was losing her scent, so she sometimes took a fox's track for a dog's and even lost her way, betrayed by her scent —which had never happened when she was young. Being unweU, she had stopped hunting calves and big rams, as of old, and kept well out of the way of mares with foals, feeding only on carrion. Only very seldom did she have fresh meat-,-in spring when she met a doe hare and made off with her babies or got among the lambs in a peasant's barn.
By the post road, about three miles from her lair, was a forest lodge. This was the home of Ignat, an old watchman of about seventy who was always coughing and talking to himselЈ He usually slept at night and wandered through the forest in daytime with a shot-gun, whistling at the hares. He must have had something to do with engines once because he never came to a halt without shouting 'Brakes on!' and he would not go on without a 'Full steam ahead!' He had a big black mongrel bitch called Arapka, and when she ran too far ahead he shouted, 'Reverse!' Sometimes he sang, staggering violently, and he often fell—blown over by the wind, thought the wolf—and shouted, 'We've run off the rails!'
The wolf remembered a ram and two ewes grazing near the lodge in summer and autumn and she fancied she had heard bleating in the shed not long ago as she ran past. As she went up to the hut, she con- sidered that it was now March—the season when there must be lambs in the shed. Tortured by hunger, she thought how ravenously she would devour a lamb, and such thoughts made her teeth snap and her eyes glint in the dark like two lamps.
lgnat's hut, bam, cattle-shed and well had deep snow piled all round them. It was quiet and Arapka must be sleeping under the b^.
The wolf climbed over a snowdrift onto the shed roof and began scratching the thatch away with her paws and muzzle. The straw was rotten and crumbling, and she nearly fell through. Suddenly the smell of warm steam, dung and sheep's ^^ hit her straight in the muzzle. Feeling the cold, a lamb gently bleated do^ below. The wolfjumped through the hole and her four paws and chest hit something soft and warm. That must be the ram. Meanwhile something in the shed suddenly whined and barked and there was a lot of shrill yapping. The sheep all crashed back against the waU and the terrified wolf seized something in her teeth at random and rushed out....
She ran as fast as she could. Scenting wolf, Arapka howled furiously, frightened hens clucked inside the lodge, and Ignat wcnt out into the porch.
'FuU steam ahead!' he shouted. 'Sound the whistle!'
He whistled like an engine and then shouted several rimes. The forest echoed back all these noises.
When things had gro^ quieter the wolf calmed downwn a little. Holding the prey in her teeth and dragging it along the snow, she noticed that it was heavier and somehow harder than lambs usually are at that season. It seemed to have a different smell and there were strange noises.
The wolf stopped and laid her burden on the snow, so that she could rest and start eating—then suddenly leapt back in disgust. This was no lamb, but a puppy—black, with a big head and long legs, of some large type, with a white patch over his whole forehead like Arapka. Judging by his manners, he was an ordinary ignorant farm dog. He licked his injured back, wagged his tail, quite unimpressed, and barked at the wolЈ She growled like a dog and ran of[ He ran after her. She looked back and clicked her teeth. Hc stopped, baffled, and must have decided that she was having a game with him bccause he stretched his muzzle back towards thc lodgc and gave a joyous, ringing peal of barks as if asking his mother Arapka to come and play with him and the wolf.
It was already growing light and as the wolf madc her way home through a thick aspen copse, cach aspen-tree could be clearly seen. Woodcocks were waking already and the puppy kept putting up magnificent cock birds which were startled by its barks and careless gambols.