Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/109

 Rh . A thin stream of red blood trickled down Zinovey Borisych's temple and cheek.

"A priest " Zinovey Borisych groaned hoarsely, and with loathing drew his head away as far as he could from Sergei, who was still sitting on him, " to confess," he uttered still less distinctly, shivering and looking sideways at the hot blood that was thickening under his hair.

"You're good enough without that," murmured Katerina Lvovna.

"Enough trifling with him," she said to Sergei, "catch hold of his throat properly."

Zinovey Borisych gasped.

Katerina Lvovna stooped down and pressing her own hands over Sergei's, that were tightly clasped round her husband's throat, put her ear to his breast. After five quiet minutes she got up and said: "Enough; that will do for him."

Sergei also rose and took a long breath. Zinovey Borisych lay dead—strangled—and with a cut on his temple. Under his head on the left side was a little pool of blood, which, however, now flowed no longer from the small wound that had become clotted and congealed with hair.

Sergei carried Zinovey Borisych into the cellar under the floor of the little stone store-room, where he himself had so recently been locked up by the late Boris Timofeich, and then returned to