“There’s a vein, you know,” observed Tcherevin, “if you don’t cut through that vein straightaway a man will go on struggling and won’t die, however much blood is lost.”

“But she did die. They found her dead in the evening. They informed the police, began searching for me, and found me at nightfall in the bathhouse!⁠ ⁠… And here I’ve been close upon four years,” he added, after a pause.

“H’m⁠ ⁠… to be sure if you don’t beat them there will be trouble,” Tcherevin observed coolly and methodically, pulling out his tobacco-pouch again. He began taking long sniffs at intervals. “Then again you seem to have been a regular fool, young fellow, too. I caught my wife with a lover once. So I called her into the barn; I folded the bridle in two. ‘To whom do you swear to be true? To whom do you swear to be true?’ says I. And I did give her a beating with that bridle, I beat her for an hour and a half. ‘I’ll wash your feet and drink the water,’ she cried at last. Ovdotya was her name.”

Summer Time