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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 57
again with a swinging blow on her back and she fell on the
ground like a log. ^
"Finish her off," shouted Mikolka and he leapt, beside himself,
out of the cart. Several young men, also flushed with drink,
seized anything they could come across — whips, sticks, poles,
and ran to the dying mare. Mikolka stood on one side and began
dealing random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched
out her head, drew a long breath and died.
"You butchered her," some one shouted in the crowd.
"Why wouldn't she gallop then?"
"My property!" shouted Mikolka, with bloodshot eyes,
brandishing the bar in his hands. He stood as though regretting
that he had nothing more to beat.
"No mistake about it, you are not a Christian," many voices
were shouting in the crowd.
But the poor" boy, beside himself, made his way screaming
through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her
bleeding dead head and kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed the
lips. . . . Then he jumped up and flew in a frenzy with his little
fists out at Mikolka. At that instant his father who had been
running after him, snatched him up and carried him out of the
crowd.
"Come along, come! Let us go home," he said to him.
"Father! Why did they . . . kill . . . the poor horse!" he
sobbed, but his voice broke and the words came in shrieks from
his panting chest.
"They are drunk. . . . They are brutal . . . it's not our busi-
ness!" said his father. He put his arms round his father but he
felt choked, choked. He tried to draw a breath, to cry out — and
woke up.
He waked up, gasping for breath, his hair soaked with per-
spiration, andstood up in terror.
"Thank God, that was only a dream," he said, sitting down
under a tree and drawing deep breaths. "But what is it? Is it
some fever coming on? Such a hideous dream!"
He felt utterly broken; darkness and confusion were in his
soul. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on
his hands.
"Good God!" he cried, "can it be, can it be, that I shall really
take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull
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