“For bread? Nonsense!”

“But why are you wagging your tongue? Uncle Vasya and you killed the cow plague. 11 That’s why you came here.”

The laughter was louder than ever. The serious ones looked on with even greater indignation.

“That’s nonsense!” shouted Skuratov. “That’s a fib of Mikita’s, and it’s not about me, but Vaska, and they’ve mixed me up in it. I’m a Moscow man and I was brought up to tramping from a child. When the deacon was teaching me to read, he used to pull me by the ear and make me repeat, ‘Lead me not into temptation in Thy infinite mercy,’ and soon I used to repeat, ‘lead me to the police station in Thy infinite mercy,’ and so on. So that’s how I used to go on from my childhood up.”