Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com Lyagavy, there was not something wrong about it and he
was turning him into ridicule. But Mitya had no time to
pause over such trifles. He hurried, striding along, and only
when he reached Suhoy Possyolok did he realise that they
had come not one verst, nor one and a half, but at least three.
This annoyed him, but he controlled himself.
They went into the hut. The forester lived in one half of
the hut, and Gorstkin was lodging in the other, the bet-
ter room the other side of the passage. They went into that
room and lighted a tallow candle. The hut was extremely
overheated. On the table there was a samovar that had gone
out, a tray with cups, an empty rum bottle, a bottle of vod-
ka partly full, and some half-eaten crusts of wheaten bread.
The visitor himself lay stretched at full length on the bench,
with his coat crushed up under his head for a pillow, snor-
ing heavily. Mitya stood in perplexity.
‘Of course, I must wake him. My business is too impor-
tant. I’ve come in such haste. I’m in a hurry to get back
to-day,’ he said in great agitation. But the priest and the for-
ester stood in silence, not giving their opinion. Mitya went
up and began trying to wake him himself; he tried vigor-
ously, but the sleeper did not wake.
‘He’s drunk,’ Mitya decided. ‘Good Lord! What am I
to do? What am I to do?’ And, terribly impatient, he be-
gan pulling him by the arms, by the legs, shaking his head,
lifting him up and making him sit on the bench. Yet, after
prolonged exertions, he could only succeed in getting the
drunken man to utter absurd grunts, and violent, but inar-
ticulate oaths.