Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/312

Rh break under your weight, and you will inevitably perish!'

'But there is no other way to cross. .. and don't you hear them in pursuit?' groaned the poor wretch in despair, and he stepped on to the plank.

'I won't allow it! . .. No, I won't allow you to rush to destruction!' cried the zealous friend, and he snatched the plank from under the fugitive. The latter instantly fell into the boiling torrent, and was drowned.

The enemy smiled complacently, and walked away; but the friend sat down on the bank, and fell to weeping bitterly over his poor. .. poor friend!

To blame himself for his destruction did not however occur to him. .. not for an instant.

'He would not listen to me! He would not listen!' he murmured dejectedly.

'Though indeed,' he added at last. 'He would have had, to be sure, to languish his whole life long in an awful prison! At any rate, he is out of suffering now! He is better off now! Such was bound to be his fate, I suppose!

'And yet I am sorry, from humane feeling!'

And the kind soul continued to sob inconsolably over the fate of his misguided friend.

Dec. 1878.