a silver, but a pinch-back one....
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?''
I set off with the boy to his home. They lived in a smoky hut in the
back-yard of a factory, which had long ago been burnt down and not
rebuilt. We found both Trofimitch and his wife at home. The discharged
sergeant was a tall old man, erect and sinewy, with yellowish grey
whiskers, an unshaven chin and a perfect network of wrinkles on his
cheeks and forehead. His wife looked older than he. Her red eyes,
which looked buried in her unhealthily puffy face, kept blinking
dejectedly. Some sort of dark rags hung about them by way of clothes.
I explained to Trofimitch what I wanted and why I had come. He
listened to me in silence without once winking or moving from me his
stupid and strained--typically soldierly--eyes.
'Whims and fancies!' he brought out at last in a husky, toothless
bass. 'Is that the way gentlemen behave? And if Petka really did not
steal the watch--then I'll give him one for that! To teach him not to
play the fool with little gentlemen! And if he did steal it, then I
would give it to him in a very different style, whack, whack, whack!
With the flat of a sword; in horseguard's fashion! No need to think
twice about it! What's the meaning of it? Eh? Go for them with sabres!
Here's a nice business! Tfoo!'
This last interjection Trofimitch pronounced in a falsetto. He was
obviously perplexed.
'If you are willing to restore the watch to me,' I explained to him--I
did not dare to address him familiarly in spite of his being a
soldier--'I will with pleasure pay you this rouble here. The watch is
not worth more, I imagine.'
'Well!' growled Trofimitch, still amazed and, from old habit,
devouring me with his eyes as though I were his superior officer.
'It's a queer business, eh? Well, there it is, no understanding it.
Ulyana, hold your tongue!' he snapped out at his wife who was opening
her mouth. 'Here's the watch,' he added, opening the table drawer; 'if
it really is yours, take it by all means; but what's the rouble for?
Eh?'
