They gave you no answer, but charged you to take over a printing press here in Russia from some one, and to keep it till you handed it over to some one who would come from them for it.

I don't know the details exactly, but I fancy that's the position in outline.

You undertook it in the hope, or on the condition, that it would be the last task they would require of you, and that then they would release you altogether.

Whether that is so or not, I learnt it, not from them, but quite by chance.

But now for what I fancy you don't know; these gentry have no intention of parting with you." "That's absurd!" cried Shatov.