Once more there was silence.
“Yes! They do, indeed they do!”
“There! there! friend.... It strikes me, my man, that you ... you know....”
“Not, ‘you know,’ at all! What’s the use of ‘you know’? It’s the truth I’m telling you; not ‘you know.’ ... Now I’ll just catechise you, and you see if you can answer me.”
“Why shouldn’t I be able to answer you? If you talk like a human being, I’ll answer you like a human being.”
“You didn’t suppose I was going to bark at you?”
“Well, if you don’t bark, I won’t cry: ‘cock-a-doodle-doo!’... Fire away!”
“Very well, then; if you can answer me, I’ll put questions to you.... First of all: we were just talking about the destroying of souls.... Now, tell me, why did the publican throw himself under the train?”
“’Twas the devil’s doing, and nothing else,” again interposed the decided voice from the group of silhouettes, before the person addressed had time to answer.
“Of course it’s the devil’s doing, I know that,” said the poultry-farmer; “but what I want to know is, on what pretence this same devil got him to go under the wheels; that’s what I want to know!”