Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/60

 Behind him marched a little insignificant soldier armed with a rifle.

Almost at the door of the dock an accident happened to this soldier. He slipped suddenly, and his rifle flew from his hand. Before it touched the floor he caught it, but knocked his knee sharply against the butt. Whether from pain or from confusion at his awkwardness, the soldier turned very red.

There was the usual questioning of the accused, assembling of jurymen, counting and swearing of witnesses. The indictment was read. A narrow-shouldered, pale secretary, much too thin for his uniform, with sticking-plaster on his cheek, read quickly in a low thick bass, which, as if fearing to injure his chest, he neither raised nor lowered; as accompaniment, the ventilators hummed tirelessly behind the judges' bench; and the general result was a chorus which broke on the silence of the room with drowsy, narcotic effect.

The presiding judge, a short-sighted, middle-aged man with a look of extreme fatigue, sat motionless, and held his hand to his forehead as if shading his eyes from the sun. While the ventilator hummed and the secretary droned, he was thinking of something not connected with work. When the secretary paused to take breath and turn over a page, he started suddenly, and, bending to the ear of his colleague, asked with a sigh —