“Did you ever hear of that crime, Semyónitch, or did you ever see me before?”
“Of course I heard of it! The country was full of it. But it happened a long time ago. And I have forgotten what I heard,” said Makár.
“Perhaps you heard who killed the merchant?” asked Aksénof.
Makár laughed, and said:
“Why, of course the man who had the knife in his bag killed him. If any one put the knife in your things and was not caught doing it—it would have been impossible. For how could they have put the knife in your bag? Was it not standing close by your head? And you would have heard it, wouldn’t you?”
As soon as Aksénof heard these words he felt convinced that this was the very man who had killed the merchant.
He stood up and walked away. All that night he was unable to sleep. Deep melancholy came upon him, and he began to call back the past in his imagination.
He imagined his wife as she had been when for the last time she had come to see him in the prison. She seemed to stand before him exactly as though she were alive, and he saw her face and her eyes, and he seemed to hear her words and her laugh.
Then his imagination brought up his children before him; one a little boy in a little fur coat, and the other on his mother’s breast.
And he imagined himself as he was at that time, young and happy. He remembered how he had sat on the steps of the tavern when they arrested him, and how his soul was full of joy as he played on his guitar.