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basement of the station buffet). Trains came and went. They were shunted, coupled, and uncoupled to the waving of furled and unfurled signal flags. Locomotives hooted, guards tooted their horns, and shunters blew their whistles. Smoke rose in endless ladders to the sky. Hissing engines scalded the cold winter clouds with clouds of boiling steam.
    Fuflygin, the Divisional Manager, and Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov, the Track Overseer of the station area, walked up and down along the edge of the tracks. Antipov had been pestering the repair shops about the quality of the spare parts for mending the tracks. The steel was not sufficiently tensile, the rails failed the test for strains, and Antipov thought that they would crack in the frosty weather. The management merely shelved his complaints. Someone was making money on the contracts.
    Fuflygin wore an expensive fur coat on which the piping of the railway uniform had been sewn; it was unbuttoned, showing his new civilian serge suit. He stepped cautiously on the embankment, glancing down with pleasure at the line of his lapels, the straight creases on his trousers, and his elegant shoes. What Antipov was saying came in one ear and went out the other. Fuflygin had his own thoughts; he kept taking out his watch and looking at it; he was in a hurry to be off.
    " Quite right, quite right, my dear fellow, " he broke in impatiently, " but that ' s only dangerous on the main lines with a lot of traffic. But just look at what you ' ve got. Sidings and dead ends, nettles and dandelions. And the traffic—at most an old shunting engine for sorting the empties. What more do you want? You must be out of your mind! Talk about steel—wooden rails would do here! "
    Fuflygin looked at his watch, snapped the lid, and gazed into the distance where a road ran toward the railway. A carriage came into sight at a bend of the road. This was Fuflygin ' s own turnout. His wife had come for him. The coachman drew in the horses almost at the edge of the tracks, talking to them in a high-pitched womanish voice, like a nursemaid scolding fretful children; they were frightened of trains. In a corner of the carriage sat a pretty woman negligently leaning against the cushions.
    " Well, my good fellow, some other time, " said the Divisional Manager with a wave of the hand, as much as to say, " I ' ve got more important things than rails to think about. " The couple drove off.
6
    Three or four hours later, almost at dusk, in a field some distance from the track, where no one had been visible until then, two figures rose out of the ground and, looking back over their shoulders, quickly walked away.
    " Let ' s walk faster, " said Tiverzin. " I ' m not worried about spies following us, but the moment those slowpokes in their hole in the ground have finished they ' ll come out and catch up with us. I can ' t bear the sight of them. What ' s the point of having a committee if you drag things out like that? You play with fire and then you duck for shelter. You ' re a fine one yourself—siding with that lot. "
    " My Daria ' s got typhus. I ought to be taking her to the hospital. Until I ' ve done that I can ' t think about anything else. "
    " They say the wages are being paid today. I ' ll go around to the office. If it wasn ' t payday I ' d chuck the lot of you, honest to God I would. I ' d stop all this myself, I wouldn ' t wait a minute. "
    " And how would you do that, if I may ask? "
    " Nothing to it. I ' d go down to the boiler room and blow the whistle. That ' s all. "
    They said goodbye and went off in different directions.
    Tiverzin walked across the tracks toward the town. He ran into people coming from the office with their pay. There were a great many of them. By the look of it he reckoned that nearly all the station workers had been paid.
    It was getting dark, the lights were on in the office. Idle workers crowded in the square outside it. In the driveway stood Fuflygin ' s carriage and in it sat Fuflygin '