XXVIII + 

This was towards the end of April. Towards the middle of June Lopukhóf returned; lived three weeks in Petersburg, then he left for Moscow, on business for the factory, as he said. On the twenty-first of July he left; and on the twenty-third of July, in the morning, happened the misunderstanding in the hotel at the station of the Moscow railroad, on account of the stranger not getting up; and two hours later came the scene in the Kamennoï Ostrof dacha. Now the sapient reader will not fail to have guessed who shot himself. “I saw long ago that it was Lopukhóf,” says the sapient reader, in triumph at his perspicacity. Where could he have hid himself, and how did his cap have a bullet-hole through the top? “There is no need of asking; it is only a trick of his, but he caught himself in a net, the rascal,” says the sapient reader. Nu! God be with thee; decide it just as thou pleasest; there’s no reasoning with thee. + 