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“What I think, Ilya Stepanitch, is that you ought first to make certain whether your suppositions are correct…. Perhaps your lady love is alive and well.” (“Shall I tell him the real explanation of the taps?” flashed through my mind. “No–later.”)

“She has not written to me since we have been in camp,” observed Tyeglev.

“That proves nothing, Ilya Stepanitch.”

Tyeglev waved me off. “No! she is certainly not in this world. She called me.”

He suddenly turned to the window. “Someone is knocking again!”

I could not help laughing. “No, excuse me, Ilya Stepanitch! This time it is your nerves. You see, it is getting light. In ten minutes the sun will be up–it is past three o’clock–and ghosts have no power in the day.”

Tyeglev cast a gloomy glance at me and muttering through his teeth “good-bye,” lay down on the bench and turned his back on me.

I lay down, too, and before I fell asleep I remember I wondered why Tyeglev was always hinting at … suicide. What nonsense! What humbug! Of his own free will he had refused to marry her, had cast her off … and now he wanted to kill himself! There was no sense in it! He could not resist posing!

With these thoughts I fell into a sound sleep and when I opened my eyes the sun was already high in the sky–and Tyeglev was not in the hut.

He had, so his servant said, gone to the town.

XII

I spent a very dull and wearisome day. Tyeglev did not return to dinner nor to supper; I did not expect my brother. Towards evening a thick fog came on again, thicker even than the day before. I went to bed rather early. I was awakened by a knocking under the window.

It was my turn to be startled!

The knock was repeated and so insistently distinct that one could have no doubt of its reality. I got up, opened the window and saw Tyeglev. Wrapped in his great-coat, with his cap pulled over his eyes, he stood motionless.

“Ilya Stepanitch!” I cried, “is that you? I gave up expecting you. Come in. Is the door locked?”

Tyeglev shook his head. “I do not intend to come in,” he pronounced in a hollow tone. “I only want to ask you to give this letter to the commanding officer to-morrow.”

He gave me a big envelope sealed with five seals. I was astonished–however, I took the envelope mechanically. Tyeglev at once walked away into the middle of the road.

“Stop! stop!” I began. “Where are you going? Have you only just come? And what is the letter?”

“Do you promise to deliver it?” said Tyeglev, and moved away a few steps further. The fog blurred the outlines of his figure. “Do you promise?”

“I promise … but first–“

Tyeglev moved still further away and became a long dark blur. “Good-bye,” I heard his voice. “Farewell, Ridel, don’t remember evil against me…. And don’t forget Semyon….”

And the blur itself vanished.

This was too much. “Oh, the damned poseur,” I thought. “You must always be straining after effect!” I felt uneasy, however; an involuntary fear clutched at my heart. I flung on my great-coat and ran out into the road.

XIII

Yes; but where was I to go? The fog enveloped me on all sides. For five or six steps all round it was a little transparent–but further away it stood up like a wall, thick and white like cotton wool. I turned to the right along the village street; our house was the last but one in the village and beyond it came waste land overgrown here and there with bushes; beyond the waste land, a quarter of a mile from the village, there was a birch copse through which flowed the same little stream that lower down encircled our village. The moon stood, a pale blur in the sky–but its light was not, as on the evening before, strong enough to penetrate the smoky density of the fog and hung, a broad opaque canopy, overhead. I made my way out on to the open ground and listened…. Not a sound from any direction, except the calling of the marsh birds.