evening, I opened the door to the doctor I could not bring
myself to look him in the face--I could merely hang my head; whereupon,
taking me by the chin, and raising it, he inquired:

"Why is your face so yellow? What is the matter with you?'

"Yes, a kind-hearted man was he, and one who had never failed to tip me
well, and to speak to me with as much consideration as though I had not
been a footman at all.

"'I am not in very good health,' I replied. 'I, I--'

"'Come, come!' was his interjection. 'After dinner I must look you
over, and in the meanwhile, do keep up your spirits.'

"Then I realised that poison him I could not, but that the powder must
be swallowed by myself--yes, by myself! Aye, over my heart a flash of
lightning had gleamed, and shown me that now I was no longer following
the road properly assigned me by fate.

"Rushing away to my room, I poured out a glass of water, and emptied
into it the powder; whereupon the water thickened, fizzed, and became
topped with foam. Oh, a terrible moment it was!... Then I drank the
mixture. Yet no burning sensation ensued, and though I listened to my
vitals, nothing was to be heard in that quarter, but, on the contrary,
my head began to lighten, and I found myself losing the sense of
self-pity which had brought me almost to the point of tears....
Shall we settle ourselves here?"

Before us a large stone, capped with green moss and climbing plants,
was good-humouredly thrusting upwards a broad, flat face beneath which
the body had, like that of the hero Sviatogov, sunken into the earth
through its own weight until only the face, a visage worn with aeons of
meditation, was now visible. On every side, also, had oak-trees
overgrown and encompassed the bulk of the projection, as though they
too had been made of stone, with their branches drooping sufficiently
low to brush the wrinkles of the ancient monolith. Kalinin seated
himself on his haunches under the overhanging rim of the stone, and
said as he snapped some twigs in half:

"This is where we ought to have been sitting whilst the rain was coming
down."

"And so say I," I rejoined. "But pray continue your story."

"Yes, when you have put a match to the fire."

Whereafter, further withdrawing his spare frame under the stone, so
that he might stretch himself at full length, Kalinin continued:

"I walked to the pantry quietly enough, though my legs were tottering
beneath me, and I had a cold sensation in my br