I could not bear it, at last, and, without a word to anyone, slipped out of the house and proceeded to hunt for the beggar boy to whom I had given my watch.
I soon found him; he was playing knucklebones in the churchyard with some other boys.
I called him aside--and, breathless and stammering, told him that my family were angry with me for having given away the watch--and that if he would consent to give it back to me I would gladly pay him for it.... To be ready for any emergency, I had brought with me an old-fashioned rouble of the reign of Elizabeth, which represented the whole of my fortune.
"But I haven't got it, your watch," answered the boy in an angry and tearful voice; "my father saw it and took it away from me; and he was for thrashing me, too. 'You must have stolen it from somewhere,' he said. 'What fool is going to make you a present of a watch?'"
"And who is your father?"
"My father? Trofimitch."
"But what is he? What's his trade?"
"He is an old soldier, a sergeant. And he has no trade at all. He mends old shoes, he re-soles them. That's all his trade. That's what he lives by."
"Where do you live? Take me to him."
"To be sure I will. You tell my father that you gave me the watch. For he keeps pitching into me, and calling me a thief! And my mother, too. 'Who is it you are taking after,' she says, 'to be a thief?'"