“‘Sit down,’ he says again; ‘take the pen and write.’
“And then he goes and clutches at my ear and gives it a good pull. I looked at him in the sort of way the devil may look at a priest.
“‘I can’t write, your worship.’
“‘Write, write!’
“‘Have mercy on me, your worship!’
“‘Write your best; write, write!’
“And all the while he keeps pulling my ear, pulling and twisting. Pals, I’d rather have had three hundred strokes of the cat; I tell you it was hell.
“‘Write, write!’ that was all he said.”
“Had the fellow gone mad? What the mischief was it?
“Bless us, no! A little while before, a secretary had done a stroke of business at Tobolsk: he had robbed the local treasury and gone off with the money; he had very big ears, just as I have. They had sent the fact all over the country. I answered to that description; that’s why he tormented me with his ‘Write, write!’ He wanted to find out if I could write, and to see my hand.