"You are right; it is shameful."
"I wonder you don't do something."
"Do something! What can we do? We rob them when we get the chance, but that doesn't make things easier. Besides, they are not so bad after all—the Pole and the Englishman. The Englishman taught my boy to cast accounts; he's now a clerk in the superintendent's office. And the Pole taught my girl to speak French; she's now maid to the governor's lady. It didn't cost me a kopeck: no, they're not a bad sort."
"Still, think of the injustice."
"Yes, the injustice; that's what makes my blood boil. I was a robber; I tell you straight what I was; and I killed a gorodovoi who interfered with me: that's what brought me here. But what's that to being a spy, and plotting against the Little Father's life? No, and if I had my rights——"
The drink was beginning to take effect; the posselentsy was becoming noisy.
"Yes, yes," interrupted Sowinski; "and I suppose if the Englishman were out of the way you would stand a chance of getting your old job—his job—again?"
"Perhaps—if I could bribe the governor's secretary. But what chance is there of that? His price is too high for me. And besides, the Englishman is not out of the way, nor likely to be."
"And yet it might be managed too. A determined man like you, with say a couple of hundred roubles to back you, might go far."
The Russian was not so much fuddled that he failed to understand the drift of the other's words.