stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen
garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything
seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps
further.
'Who is there?' I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.
'Prrr-r-r!' a startled corn-crake flew up almost under my feet and
flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started.... What
foolishness!
I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I
went towards him.
'You will call in vain,' he said. 'That voice has come to us--to
me--from far away.'
He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road
towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went
back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times
called 'Ilyusha' I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive
and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who
knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in
reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had
agitated Tyeglev so much.
I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and
looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our
hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark
patch, against the whiteness of the mist all round, that dim whiteness
which perplexes and deadens the sight more than darkness itself. All
at once it seemed to me that something alive, fairly big, stirred on
the ground near the willow. Exclaiming 'Stop! Who is there?' I rushed
forward. I heard scurrying footsteps, like a hare's; a crouching
figure whisked by me, whether man or woman I could not tell.... I
tried to clutch at it but did not succeed; I stumbled, fell down and
stung my face against a nettle. As I was getting up, leaning on the
ground, I felt something rough under my hand: it was a chased brass
comb on a cord, such as peasants wear on their belt.
Further search led to nothing--and I went back to the hut with the
comb in my hand, and my cheeks tingling.
IX
I found Tyeglev sitting on the bench. A candle was burning on the
table before him and he was writing something in a little album which
he always had with him. Seeing me, he quickly put the album in his
pocket and began filling his pipe.
'Look here, my friend,' I began, 'what a trophy I have brought back
from my expedition!' I showed him the comb and told him what had
happened to me near the willow. 'I must have startled a thief,' I
added. 'You heard a horse was stolen from our neighbour yesterday?'
Tyeglev smiled frigidly and lighted his pipe. I sat down beside him.
'And do you still believe, Ilya Stepanitch,' I said, 'that the voice
we heard came from those unknown realms....'
He stopped me with a peremptory gesture.
'Ridel,' he began, 'I am in no mood for jesting, and so I beg you not
to jest.'
He certainly was in no mood for jesting. His face was changed. It
looked paler, longer and more expressive. His strange, 'different'
eyes kept shifting from one object to another.
'I never thought,' he began again, 'that I should reveal to
another ... another man what you are about to hear and what ought
to have died ... yes, died, hidden in my breast; but it seems it is
to be--and indeed I have no choice. It is destiny! Listen.'
And he told me a long story.
