I

The merchandise consisted of small mirrors, cheap soap, rings, thread, kerchiefs, needles, cracknels⁠—these in the covered shop. The open-body cart contained everything they gathered in: dead cats, eggs, heavy linen, crash, rags. But one day, after having thus travelled about for the space of several years, the brothers came near cutting each other’s throats⁠—in a dispute over the division of the profits, rumour averred⁠—and separated to avoid a catastrophe. Kuzma hired himself to a drover. Tikhon took over a small posting-house on the metalled highway of Vorgol, five versts from Durnovka, and opened a dram-shop and a tiny “popular” shop.⁠—“I deal in small wears tea shugar tubako sigars and so furth.”