“Why, you heard what was said—that he got cut up about his wife,” answered the other speaker. “Got upset about a woman, took to drinking, and of course any sort of thing can come of the drink....”
“So that, if you look into the matter, it appears like as if the first cause was trouble?”
“I s’pose so....”
“Very well, then; now you explain. What part of him did the wheel go over?”
“I don’t know; you’d better ask him.... I say! Mikhàilych! where did the wheel go over the publican?”
“It cut him right across the body,” answered the watchman—“like this.”
“And of course it went over his back and all?” demanded the poultry-farmer, like a regular expert.
“Of course it smashed every bit of him that came under it....”
“That’s all right! Now, allow me to ask you, When you say that it happened ‘from trouble,’ tell me whereabouts in him was the trouble—was it in his back, or his body, or anywhere in his bones?”
This question appeared to the audience so amazingly incongruous, that, after a short silence, several persons went off into fits of laughing; and the interlocutor of the poultry-farmer, evidently not wishing to continue such an idle conversation, remarked—