Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/63

60 despair — all would have fallen as vainly upon numbed nerves and custom as waves upon a rock.

The indictment was finished. The President aimlessly stroked the table before him, blinked his eyes at the prisoner, and asked, idly rolling his tongue —

"Prisoner at the bar, do you confess to the murder of your wife on the evening of the 9th of July?"

"I am not guilty," answered the accused man, rising, and holding the breast of his khalat.

The Court hurriedly set about the examination of witnesses, and soon had questioned two peasant women, five men, and the detective charged with the investigation of the crime. All of these, splashed with mud, fatigued with walking and waiting in the witnesses' room, melancholy and morose, told the same tale. Kharlamoff, they agreed, lived with his wife "well," and beat her only when he was drunk. At sunset on the 9th of July the old woman was found in the shed attached to her cabin with her skull beaten in. Beside her in a pool of blood lay a hatchet. When they looked for Kharlamoff to tell him of the tragedy he was neither in the hut nor in the street. They looked for him about the village, searched the drink-shops and huts, but he had vanished. Two days later he appeared at the office, pale, tattered, trembling all over. He was handcuffed and locked up.

"Prisoner!" The President turned to Kharlamoff.