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.

"Tyeglev!" I cried. "Ilya Stepanitch!! Tyeglev!!"

My voice died away near me without an answer; it seemed as though the fog would not let it go further. "Tyeglev!" I repeated.

No one answered.

I went forward at random. Twice I struck against a fence, once I nearly fell into a ditch, and almost stumbled against a peasant's horse lying on the ground. "Tyeglev! Tyeglev!" I cried.

All at once, almost behind me, I heard a low voice, "Well, here I am. What do you want of me?"

I turned round quickly.

Before me stood Tyeglev with his hands hanging at his sides and with no cap on his head. His face was pale; but his eyes looked animated and bigger than usual. His breathing came in deep, prolonged gasps through his parted lips.

"Thank God!" I cried in an outburst of joy, and I gripped him by both hands. "Thank God! I was beginning to despair of finding you. Aren't you ashamed of frightening me like this? Upon my word, Ilya Stepanitch!"

"What do you want of me?" repeated Tyeglev.

"I want ... I want you, in the first place, to come back home with me. And secondly, I want, I insist, I insist as a friend, that you explain to me at once the meaning of your actions--and of this letter to the colonel. Can something unexpected have happened to you in Petersburg?"

"I found in Petersburg exactly what I expected," answered Tyeglev, without moving from the spot.

"That is ... you mean to say ... your friend ... this Masha...."

"She has taken her life," Tyeglev answered hurriedly and as it were angrily. "She was buried the day before 

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