I said before him how base in my eyes was the man who having a friend and understanding all that was meant by that sacred sentiment "friendship," was yet so devoid of generosity as to have recourse to deception; as though it were possible to conceal anything.
As I uttered these last words I laughed scornfully.
But David did not turn a hair. At last I asked him straight out: "What did he think, had our watch gone for some time after being buried in the earth or had it stopped at once?"
He answered me: "The devil only knows! What a thing to wonder about!"
I did not know what to think! David evidently had something on his mind ... but not the abduction of the watch. An unexpected incident showed me his innocence.
XVI
One day I came home by a side lane which I usually avoided as the house in which my enemy Trankvillitatin lodged was in it; but on this occasion Fate itself led me that way. Passing the open window of an eating-house, I suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a young man of free and easy manners, "a lazy fellow and a scamp," as my father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine.
"And what do you suppose they've been up to?" said Vassily, whom I could not see but heard distinctly; he was, most likely, sitting close by, near the window with a companion over the steaming tea--and as often happens with people in a closed room, spoke in a loud voice without suspecting that anyone passing in the street could hear every word: "They buried it in the ground!"
"Nonsense!" muttered another voice.
"I tell you they did, our young gentlemen are extraordinary! Especially that Davidka, he's a regular Aesop! I got up at daybreak and went to the window.... I looked out and, what do you think! Our two little dears were coming along the orchard bringing that same watch and they dug a hole under the apple-tree and there they buried it, as though it had been a baby! And they smoothed the earth over afterwards, upon my soul they did, the young rakes!"