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They talked of arson, of the Shpigulin men. "He said nothing to me about the fire when he brought me along, although he talked of everything," struck Stepan Trofimovitch for some reason. "Master, Stepan Trofimovitch, sir, is it you I see?
Gentlemen, don't tell lies! I have good evidence. By your rashness you exposed the common cause to danger. You are only one knot in an endless network of knots and your duty is blind obedience to the centre. Yet three men of you incited the Shpigulin men to set fire to the town without the least instruction to do so, and the fire has taken place." "What three? What three of us?"
Accordingly at two o'clock in the afternoon the meeting took place at Brykov, that is, in a little copse in the outskirts of the town, lying between Skvoreshniki and the Shpigulin factory. The rain of the previous night was over, but it was damp, grey, and windy. Low, ragged, dingy clouds moved rapidly across the cold sky.
The political aspect of the affair, for instance, could not cause her uneasiness; Pyotr Stepanovitch had impressed upon her three or four times that the Shpigulin ruffians ought to be flogged, and Pyotr Stepanovitch certainly had for some time past been a great authority in her eyes.
He is not to blame in any way, not in any way, not even in thought!... It's all the work of robbers who will probably be found within a week and flogged.... It's all the work of Fedka the convict, and some Shpigulin men, all the town is agog with it. That's why I say so too." "Is that right? Is that right?" Liza waited trembling for her final sentence.
What?" said Andrey Antonovitch, turning to him with a stern face, but without a trace of surprise or any recollection of his carriage and his coachman, as though he had been in his own study. "Police-superintendent Flibusterov, your Excellency. There's a riot in the town." "Filibusters?" Andrey Antonovitch said thoughtfully. "Just so, your Excellency. The Shpigulin men are making a riot."
Such presumption!... The fact is, I've not got to the bottom of it yet, they talk about two Shpigulin men, but if there are any of our fellows in it, if any one of them has had a hand in it so much the worse for him! You see what comes of letting people get ever so little out of hand!
There was a special entrance to Yulia Mihailovna's apartments on the left as one entered the house; but on this occasion they all went through the waiting-room and I imagine just because Stepan Trofimovitch was there, and because all that had happened to him as well as the Shpigulin affair had reached Yulia Mihailovna's ears as she drove into the town.
The incident was a trivial one, but it set Andrey Antonovitch pondering deeply. The position presented itself to him in an unpleasantly complicated light. In this factory the famous "Shpigulin scandal" was just then brewing, which made so much talk among us and got into the Petersburg and Moscow papers with all sorts of variations.
It was curious that at the first cry of "fire" another cry was raised that the Shpigulin men had done it. It is now well known that three Shpigulin men really did have a share in setting fire to the town, but that was all; all the other factory hands were completely acquitted, not only officially but also by public opinion.
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