“Help me! I’ll load you with gold, cure Trezorka!” he shouted to the convict.

The man was a Siberian peasant, crafty, clever, really a very skilful vet, though a peasant in every sense of the word.

“I looked at Trezorka,” he told the convicts afterwards, long after his visit to the major, however, when the whole story was forgotten. “I looked⁠—the dog was lying on a white cushion on the sofa and I saw it was inflammation, that it ought to be bled and the dog would get well, yes indeed! And I thinks to myself⁠—what if I don’t cure it, what if it dies? ‘No, your honour,’ said I, ‘you called me in too late; if it had been yesterday or the day before, I could have cured the dog, but now I can’t.’ ”

So Trezorka died.