'"What do you want, missus?" Iask and she's all of a dither,she looks like nothing on earth. "Get up, my good man!" says she. "It's trouble. The inn folks are up to no good, they want to do your merchant in. I heard it with me o^ ears—the landlord and his wife a-whispering together." Well, no wonder I'd had that feeling inside me. "And who might you be?" I asked. "Oh, I'm the cook," says she. So far so good. I get out of the carriage, go to the merchant, wake him up. "There's mischief afoot, Mister Merchant," says I, and so on and so forth. "There'll be time for sleep later, sir," says I. "But you get dressed now, before it's too late, and we'll make ourselves scarce while the going's good."
'Barely has he started dressing himself when—mercy on us!—the door opens, and blow me downwn if I don't see the landlord, his missus and three workmen come in. So they'd talked their workmen into joining in. "The merchant has a lot of money, and we'll go shares." Every one of the five holds a long knife—a knife apiece they had. The landlord locks the door. "Say your prayers, travellers," says he. "And if so be you start shouting," says he, "we shan't let you pray before you die." As if wc could shout! We're a-choking with fear, we ain't up to shouting. The merchant bursts into tears. "Good Christian folk," says he, "you've decided to murder me because you've taken a fancy to my money. Well, so be it. I ain't the first, and I shan't be the last. Not a few of us merchants have had our throats cut in inns. But why kill my driver, friends? Why must he suffer for my money?" And he says it all pathetic like. "If we leave him alive, he'll be the first to bear witness against us," says the innkeeper. "We c;in just as well kill two as one—may as well hang for a sheep as a lamb," says he. "You say your prayers and that's that, it ain't no use talking."
'The merchant and I kneel downwn together, weeping like, and we start praying. He remembers his children, while I'm still young, I am, I want to live. We look at the icons and we pray—so pathetic like, it makes me cry cven now. And the landlord's missus looks at us. "Don't bear a grudge against us in the other world, good people," says she. "And don't pray to God for us to be punished, for 'tis poverty as drove w to it." Well, we're a-praying and a-weeping away, and God hears us—takes pity on w, He do. Just when the innkeeper had the merchant by the beard—so he could cut his throat, see ?—suddenly there's no end of a knock on the window from outside. We cower do^ and the ^^eeper lets his hands fall. Someone bangs the window.
' "Mister Peter, are you there?" a voice shouts. "Get ready, it's ^me we left."
'The landlord and his missw see that someone's come for the mer- chant, they're afeared and they take to their heels. We hurry into the yard, hitch up the horses and make ourselves scarce.'
'But who was it banged the window?' asked Dymov.
'Oh, that. Some saint or angel, I reckon, for there weren't no one else. When we drove out of the yard there weren't no one in the street. 'Twas God's doing.'
Panteley told a few more 'long knives' figuring in al ofthem, and ;^ll having the same ring of fiction. Had he heard these tales from someone else, or had he made them up himself in the distant past, and then, be^^mg to lose his memory, conftued fact and fiction til he could no longer tell one from the other? All things are po^ible. It is odd, though. that whenever he happened to tell a story, now and throughout the joiurney, he clearly favoured fantasy and never recounted his actual experiences. Yegorushka took it all at face value at the time, believing every word, but he wondered afterwards that one who had travelled the length and breadth of Ruwia in his time— who had seen and kno^wn so much, whose wife and children had been burnt to death—should so disparage his eventful life that when he sat by the camp-fire he either said nothing or spoke of what had never been.
Over the stew all were silent, thinking of what they had just heard. Life is frightening and marvellow, and so whatever fearful stories you may tell in Russia, and however you embellish them with highway- men's lairs, long knives and such wonders, they will always ring true to the listener, and only a profoundly literate person will look askance, and even he will not say anything. The croa by the road, the dark bales, the vast expanse around them, the fate of those round the camp- fre—all this was so marvellow and frightening in itself that the fantas- tic element in fiction and folk-tale paled and became indistinguishable from reality.
Everyone ate out of the pot, but Panteley sat apart eating his stew from a wooden bowl. His spoon was different from the others', being of cypress wood with a little crou on it. Looking at him, Yegorushka remembered the lamp glass and quietly asked Styopka why the old fellow sat by himself.
'He's a Di^enter,' whispered Styopka and Vasya, looking as if they had mentioned a weakness or a secret vice.
All were silent, thinking. After the frightening tales they did not feel like talking about everyday things.
Suddenly in the silence Vasya drew himself upright, fixed his lustre- less eyes on one point and pricked up his ears.
'What is it?' Dymov asked.
'Someone's coming this way,' answered Vasya.
'Where do you see him?'
'There he is. A faint white shape.'
In the direction in which Vasya was looking nothing could be seen but darkness. All listened, but no steps were heard.
'Is he on the road?' asked Dymov.
'No, he's coming across country. He's coming this way.'
A minute paued in silence.
'Well, perhaps it's the merchant haunting the steppe, the one that's buried here,' said Dymov.
All cast a sidelong glance at the cross, but then they looked at each other and broke into a laugh, ashamed of their panic.
'Why should he haunt the place?' asked Panteley. 'The only ghosts are them that the earth don't accept. And the merchants were all right. They received a martyr's cro^wn, them merchants did.'
But then hurrying footsteps were heard.
'He's carrying something,' said Vasya.
They could hear the grass rustle and the coarse weeds crackle under the walker's feet, but could see no one because of the fire's glare. At last the steps sounded close by and someone coughed. The flickering light seemed to yield, the veil fell from their eyes, and the carters suddenly saw before them a man.
Whether it was due to the flickering light, or because all were keen to make out the man's face, it turned out—oddly enough—that it was neither his face nor his clothes that struck everyone first, but his smile. It was an unco^ionly good-natured, broad, gentle smile, as of a waking baby—infectious and tending to evoke an answering smile. When they had looked him over the stranger turned out to be a man of thirty, ugly and in no way remarkablc. He was a southerner—tall, with a long nose, long arms and long legs. Everything about him seemed long except his neck—so short that it gave him a stooped look. He wore a clean white shirt with an embroidered collar, baggy white trousers and new riding boots, seeming quite a dandy by comparison with the carters. He was carrying a large white object, mysterious at fmt sight, and from behind his shoulder peeped out a ^rn barrel, also long.
Emerging from darkness into the circle of light, he stood stock- still and looked at the carters for half a minute as if calling on them to admire his smile. Then he went to the fire, grinned even more broadly and asked if a stranger might claim their hospitality, 'country fashion'.
'You're welcome indeed,' Panteley answered for everyone.
The stranger laid the object he was carrying near the fire—a dead bustard—and greeted them again.
All went up and examined the bustard.
'A fine big bird—how did you get it?' asked Dymov.
'Buckshot. Small shot's no use, you can't get near enough. Like to buy it, lads? It's yours for twenty copecks.'