Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/59

 memories of past, unforgiven sins. Inside, it is a barn, painfully comfortless. It is strange indeed how these fastidious procurators, judges, marshals of the nobility who at home make scenes over a smoking chimney or a stain on the floor, are reconciled here with the humming ventilators, the sickening smell of wax matches, and the dirty, damp-spotted walls.

When at nine o'clock the court assembled trials began with unusual haste. Case after case ended quickly, “as a church service without hymns”; and no one reaped a single picturesque impression from the hurried, heterogeneous procession of men, movements, speeches, misfortunes, truths, falsehoods. By two o'clock much work had been done: two men condemned to punitive regiments, one criminal of the privileged classes deprived of his rights and sent to gaol, one prisoner acquitted, and one case postponed.

At two o'clock the President announced the trial of Nikolai Kharlamoff on the charge of murdering his wife. The court was constituted as during the earlier cases. The counsel for the accused was a new barrister — a young, beardless “Candidate” in a frock-coat with bright buttons.

“Bring in the accused!” cried the President.

But the accused was already on his way to the dock. He was a tall, sturdy peasant, aged fifty-five, bald, with an apathetic, hairy face, and a great carroty beard.