But what struck Andrey Antonovitch most was that the overseer of Shpigulin's factory had brought the police just at the same time two or three packets of exactly the same leaflets as had been found on the lieutenant.

The bundles, which had been dropped in the factory in the night, had not been opened, and none of the factory-hands had had time to read one of them.

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.

Three weeks previously one of the hands had fallen ill and died of Asiatic cholera; then several others were stricken down.