Yergunov

A vain, mediocre feldsher (doctor's assistant) known throughout the district as a braggart and a drunkard, who loses his way home in a blizzard, takes shelter at a disreputable roadside inn, and falls under the spell of two horse thieves; robbed and beaten before dawn, he spends the following year and a half sliding from outrage into open envy of the thieves' lawless freedom, and by the story's end, sacked from his post and drifting, watches the inn burn -- with the two women, it is implied, murdered inside -- and feels only envy.