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“Nonsense!” muttered another voice.

“I tell you they did, our young gentlemen are extraordinary! Especially that Davidka, he’s a regular Aesop! I got up at daybreak and went to the window…. I looked out and, what do you think! Our two little dears were coming along the orchard bringing that same watch and they dug a hole under the apple-tree and there they buried it, as though it had been a baby! And they smoothed the earth over afterwards, upon my soul they did, the young rakes!”

“Ah! plague take them,” Vassily’s companion commented. “Too well off, I suppose. Well, did you dig up the watch?”

“To be sure I did. I have got it now. Only it won’t do to show it for a time. There’s been no end of a fuss over it. Davidka stole it that very night from under our old lady’s back.”

“Oh–oh!”

“I tell you, he did. He’s a desperate fellow. So it won’t do to show it. But when the officers come down I shall sell it or stake it at cards.”

I didn’t stay to hear more: I rushed headlong home and straight to David.

“Brother!” I began, “brother, forgive me! I have wronged you! I suspected you! I blamed you! You see how agitated I am! Forgive me!”

“What’s the matter with you?” asked David. “Explain!”

“I suspected that you had dug up our watch under the apple-tree.”

“The watch again! Why, isn’t it there?”

“It’s not there; I thought you had taken it, to help your friends. And it was all Vassily.”

I repeated to David all that I had overheard under the window of the eating-house.

But how to describe my amazement! I had, of course, expected David to be indignant, but I had not for a moment anticipated the effect it produced on him! I had hardly finished my story when he flew into an indescribable fury! David, who had always taken up a scornful attitude to the whole “vulgar,” as he called it, business of the watch; David, who had more than once declared that it wasn’t worth a rotten egg, jumped up from his seat, got hot all over, ground his teeth and clenched his fists. “We can’t let this pass!” he said at last; “how dare he take someone else’s property? Wait a bit, I’ll show him. I won’t let thieves off so easily!”

I confess I don’t understand to this day what can have so infuriated David. Whether he had been irritated before and Vassily’s action had simply poured oil on the flames, or whether my suspicions had wounded him, I cannot say, but I had never seen him in such excitement. I stood before him with my mouth open merely wondering how it was that his breathing was so hard and laboured.

“What do you intend to do?” I asked at last.

“You shall see after dinner, when your father lies down. I’ll find this scoffer, I’ll talk to him.”

“Well,” thought I, “I should not care to be in that scoffer’s shoes! What will happen? Merciful heavens?”

XVII.

This is what did happen:

As soon as that drowsy, stifling stillness prevailed, which to this day lies like a feather bed on the Russian household and the Russian people in the middle of the day after dinner is eaten, David went to the servants’ rooms (I followed on his heels with a sinking heart) and called Vassily out. The latter was at first unwilling to come, but ended by obeying and following us into the garden.

David stood close in front of him. Vassily was a whole head taller.

“Vassily Terentyev,” my comrade began in a firm voice, “six weeks ago you took from under this very apple-tree the watch we hid there. You had no right to do so; it does not belong to you. Give it back at once!”

Vassily was taken aback, but at once recovered himself.

“What watch? What are you talking about? God bless you! I have no watch!”

“I know what I am saying and don’t tell lies. You’ve got the watch, give it back.”