of a night! Let me light a cigarette ... it will seem like a light on
the way.'
The officer was, so I fancied, a little exhilarated.
'Did Tyeglev say anything to you?' I asked.
'To be sure he did! I said to him, 'good evening, brother,' and he
said, 'good-bye.' 'How good-bye? Why good-bye.' 'I mean to shoot
myself directly with a pistol.' He is a queer fish!'
My heart stood still. 'You say he told you ...'
'He is a queer fish!' repeated the officer, and sauntered off.
I hardly had time to recover from what the officer had told me, when
my own name, shouted several times as it seemed with effort, caught my
ear. I recognised Semyon's voice.
I called back ... he came to me.
XVI
'Well?' I asked him. 'Have you found Ilya Stepanitch?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Where?'
'Here, not far away.'
'How ... have you found him? Is he alive?'
'To be sure. I have been talking to him.' (A load was lifted from
my heart.) 'His honour was sitting in his great-coat under a birch
tree ... and he was all right. I put it to him, 'Won't you come home,
Ilya Stepanitch; Alexandr Vassilitch is very much worried about you.'
And he said to me, 'What does he want to worry for! I want to be in the
fresh air. My head aches. Go home,' he said, 'and I will come later.''
'And you left him?' I cried, clasping my hands.
'What else could I do? He told me to go ... how could I stay?'
All my fears came back to me at once.
'Take me to him this minute--do you hear? This minute! O Semyon,
Semyon, I did not expect this of you! You say he is not far off?'
'He is quite close, here, where the copse begins--he is sitting there.
It is not more than five yards from the river bank. I found him as I
came alongside the river.'
'Well, take me to him, take me to him.'
Semyon set off ahead of me. 'This way, sir.... We have only to get
down to the river and it is close there.'
But instead of getting down to the river we got into a hollow and
found ourselves before an empty shed.
'Hey, stop!' Semyon cried suddenly. 'I must have come too far to the
right.... We must go that way, more to the left....'
We turned to the left--and found ourselves among such high, rank weeds
that we could scarcely get out.... I could not remember such a tangled
growth of weeds anywhere near our village. And then all at once a marsh
was squelching under our feet, and we saw little round moss-covered
hillocks which I had never noticed before either.... We turned
back--a small hill was sharply before us and on the top of it stood a
shanty--and in it someone was snoring. Semyon and I shouted several
times into the shanty; something stirred at the further end of it, the
straw rustled--and a hoarse voice shouted, 'I am on guard.'
We turned back again ... fields and fields, endless fields.... I felt
ready to cry.... I remembered the words of the fool in
'Where are we to go?' I said in despair to Semyon.
'The devil must have led us astray, sir,' answered the distracted
servant. 'It's not natural ... there's mischief at the bottom of it!'
I would have checked him but at that instant my ear caught a sound,
distinct but not loud, that engrossed my whole attention. There was a
faint 'pop' as though someone had drawn a stiff cork from a narrow
bottle-neck. The sound came from somewhere not far off. Why the sound
seemed to me strange and peculiar I could not say, but at once I went
towards it.
Semyon followed me. Within a few minutes something tall and broad
loomed in the fog.
'The copse! here is the copse!' Semyon cried, delighted. 'Yes,
here ... and there is the master sitting under the birch-tree....
