The next day news of the fire spread all over the neighborhood. Everybody explained it with various conjectures and suppositions. Some insisted that Dubrovsky’s people had gotten drunk at the funeral and set fire to the house out of carelessness; others accused the officials, who had made too merry at the housewarming; many were convinced that it had burned down of itself with the court officials and all the servants. Some guessed the truth and maintained that Dubrovsky himself, moved by anger and despair, was to blame for the terrible calamity. Troekurov came to the scene of the fire the next day and conducted an investigation himself. It turned out that the police chief, the local court assessor, the lawyer, and the clerk, as well as Vladimir Dubrovsky, the nanny Egorovna, the servant Grigory, the coachman Anton, and the blacksmith Arkhip had disappeared no one knew where. All the servants testified that the officials had burned up when the roof collapsed. Their charred bones were unearthed. The women Vasilisa and Lukerya said they had seen Dubrovsky and the blacksmith Arkhip a few minutes before the fire. The blacksmith Arkhip, according to general testimony, was alive and was probably the main one, if not the only one, to blame for the fire. Dubrovsky, too, was under strong suspicion. Kirila Petrovich sent the governor a detailed account of the whole incident, and a new case was started.
Soon other news gave other food for curiosity and gossip. Robbers had appeared in * * * and spread terror through the whole region. The measures taken against them by the government proved inadequate. Robberies, one more remarkable than the other, followed one after the other. There was no safety either on the roads or in the villages. Several troikas full of robbers drove in broad daylight all over the province, stopped travelers and the post, rode into villages, robbed landowners’ houses and committed them to the flames. The chief of the band became known for his intelligence, daring, and a sort of magnanimity. Wonders were told of him; the name of Dubrovsky was on everybody’s lips, everybody was sure that he and no one else was the leader of these daring evildoers. One thing was astonishing: Troekurov’s estates had been spared; not a single barn had been robbed, not a single cart had been stopped. With his usual arrogance, Troekurov ascribed this exception to the fear he had been able to instill in the whole province, and also to the excellent quality of the police he had established in his villages. At first the neighbors laughed among themselves at Troekurov’s haughtiness, and expected every day that the uninvited guests would visit Pokrovskoe, where there was a good haul to be made, but they were finally forced to agree with him and admit that the robbers, too, had an incomprehensible respect for him…Troekurov was triumphant, and each time there was news of a new robbery by Dubrovsky, he burst into mockery of the governor, the police chiefs and company commanders from whom Dubrovsky always escaped unharmed.
Meanwhile October 1st came—the day of the church feast in Troekurov’s village. But before we set about describing this solemnity and the subsequent events, we ought to acquaint the reader with some persons new to him, or of whom we made only slight mention at the beginning of our story.
CHAPTER EIGHT
