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ITALIAN BED LINENS : stood motionless, with his head drooping on his breast as though he were dead. "Here's a knife," said Fyodor, taking an old kitchen knife out of the front of Akim's coat. "Aha, my fine gentleman, so that's what you were after," cried Naum. "Lads, you are witnesses ... here he wanted to murder me and set fire to the house.... Lock him up for the night in the cellar, he can't get out of that.... I'll keep watch all night myself and to-morrow as soon as it is light we will take him to the police captain ... and you are
ITALIAN BED LINENS : witnesses, do you hear!" Akim was thrust into the cellar and the door was slammed.... Naum set two men to watch it and did not go to bed himself. Meanwhile, Yefrem's wife having convinced herself that her uninvited guest had gone, set about her cooking though it was hardly daylight.... It was a holiday. She squatted down before the stove to get a hot ember and saw that someone had scraped out the hot ashes before her; then she wanted her knife and searched for it in vain; then of her four cooking pots one was missing. Yefrem's wife had the
ITALIAN BED LINENS : reputation of being a woman with brains, and justly so. She stood and pondered, then went to the lumber room, to her husband. It was not easy to wake him--and still more difficult to explain to him why he was being awakened.... To all that she said to him Yefrem made the same answer. "He's gone away--well, God bless him.... What business is it of mine? He's taken our knife and our pot--well, God bless him, what has it to do with me?" At last, however, he got up and after listening attentively to his wife came to the conclusion that it was a bad business, that something
ITALIAN BED LINENS : must be done. "Yes," his wife repeated, "it is a bad business; maybe he will be doing mischief in his despair.... I saw last night that he was not asleep but was just lying on the stove; it would be as well for you to go and see, Yefrem Alexandritch." "I tell you what, Ulyana Fyodorovna," Yefrem began, "I'll go myself to the inn now, and you be so kind, mother, as to give me just a drop to sober me." Ulyana hesitated. "Well," she decided at last, "I'll give you the vodka, Yefrem Alexandritch; but mind now, none of your pranks."
ITALIAN BED LINENS : "Don't you worry, Ulyana Fyodorovna." And fortifying himself with a glass, Yefrem made his way to the inn. It was only just getting light when he rode up to the inn but, already a cart and a horse were standing at the gate and one of Naum's labourers was sitting on the box holding the reins. "Where are you off to?" asked Yefrem. "To the town," the man answered reluctantly. "What for?" The man simply shrugged his shoulders and did not answer. Yefrem jumped off his horse and went into the house. In the entry he came upon Naum, fully dressed and with his cap on.
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