The woman was involuntarily constrained to obey without more ado.

"And you, my friend, spread out my mantle before the fire!" said the
stranger turning towards Ivan, and stripping from his neck and shoulders
the heavy mantle which was dripping with rain.

The youth and the woman incontinently obeyed his commands as if they
were under a spell.

The mantle was removed, the slim, muscular figure of the stranger was
clearly visible, it seemed too soft for a man's. His hands as they
grasped the beaker seemed white and delicate.

"That is certainly a woman," murmured the headsman's wife to Ivan,
staring suspiciously at the stranger from beneath her thick contracted
bushy eyebrows. Then approaching him and looking him full in the face
she said: "My Dovey! It seems to me that you are in no good way. Whom do
you seek?"

"The master," replied the stranger curtly, resting his elbows on the
hearth.

"Possibly you may suppose this house to be an inn because it lies at the
extreme end of the town?"

"I think nothing of the sort, my pretty mistress. I know that here
dwells Master Zudar, the worthy ferry-master."

"Ferry-master?"

"Yes, ferry-master! Does he not transport men from this world to the
next?"

"How come you to know the master?"

"I have never seen him, yet I know him well for all that. It is not
possible to speak to him now because he is a-praying. He prays regularly
for a whole hour at a time, and then it is not well then to disturb him.
That is why you two are crouching in the kitchen here. You, my pretty
mistress, are Master Zudar's wife, and this young man is his 'prentice.
I know you very well also."

"But who are you yourself then? Speak! What do you want?" asked the
woman much puzzled.

"I shall tell that to the master himself, inside there, when he has
quite finished his devotions. It is his habit every night, before he
lies down, to fire off his gun, then I will approach him. Meanwhile sit
down beside me! Look ye, this bench can very well hold the pair of us,
let us have a little talk together."

The stranger thereupon doffed his little round furred cap and his long
black trussed-up locks fell in curling ringlets about his shoulders.

"'Tis a woman, a woman indeed!" whispered Ivan and the dame of the house
to each other.

The latter now approached the enigmatical shape a little more boldly,
and sitting down beside him, opened a conversation with him.

"What, pray, is your business with my