k the door.

"Let me in! Let me in! I am dying!"

Sarvoelgyi's face, in his agony of terror, became like that of a damned
soul.

That was Kandur's voice! That was Kandur's figure. But so white!

Perhaps the naked soul of one on the way to hell?

The horrible figure thundered continuously at the door and cried:

"Let me in! Give me to drink! I am burning! Bathe me in oil! Help me to
undress! I am dying! I am in hell! Help! Drag me out of it!"

All through the street they could hear his cries.

Then the damned soul began to curse, and beat the door with his fist,
because they would not open to him.

"A plague upon you, cursed accomplice. You shut me out and won't let me
in? Thrust me into the tanpit of hell and leave me there? My skin is
peeling off! I am going blind! An ulcer upon your soul!"

The writhing figure tore off his clothes, which burned his limbs like a
shirt of Nessus, and while so doing the hidden silver coins he had
received from Sarvoelgyi fell to the ground.

"Devil take you, money and all!" he shouted, dashing the coins against
the door. "Here's your cursed money! Pick it up!"

Then he staggered on, leaning against the railing and howling in pain:

"Help! Help! A fortune for a glass of water! Only let me live until I
can drag that fellow with me! Help, man, help!"

A deathly numbness possessed Sarvoelgyi. If that figure of horror were no
"spirit," he must hasten to make him so. He would betray all. That was
the greatest danger. He must not live.

He could not see him from the window. Perhaps if he opened the shutters,
he could fire at him. He was a highwayman: who could call Sarvoelgyi to
account for shooting him? He had done it in self-defence.

If only his hands would not tremble so! It was impossible to hit him
with a pistol except by placing the barrel to his forehead.

Should he go out to him?

Who would dare to go out to meet that demon face to face? Could the
spider leave its web?

While he hesitated, while he struggled to measure the distance from door
to window and back, a new sound was heard in the street:--three horsemen
came trotting up from the end of the village, and in them Sarvoelgyi
recognized, from their uniforms, the country police.

Then the bell began to ring, and the peasants came out of their doors,
armed with pitchforks and clubs: noisy crowds collected. In their midst
were one or two bound figures whom they drove forward with blows: they
had seized the rob