ught with a promise. She wished to hasten its growth, and asked
herself persistently: "How shall I behave? Suppose I come straight
out with the truth?"

It was dark, damp, and cold. The windows of the peasants' huts shone
dimly with a motionless reddish light; the cattle lowed drowsily in the
stillness, and short halloos reverberated through the fields. The
village was clothed in darkness and an oppressive melancholy.

"Here!" said the girl, "you've chosen a poor lodging for yourself. This
peasant is very poor." She opened the door and shouted briskly into
the hut: "Aunt Tatyana, a lodger has come!" She ran away, her
"Good-by!" flying back from the darkness.

The mother stopped at the threshold and peered about with her palm
above her eyes. The hut was very small, but its cleanness and neatness
caught the eye at once. From behind the stove a young woman bowed
silently and disappeared. On a table in a corner toward the front of
the room burned a lamp. The master of the hut sat at the table,
tapping his fingers on its edge. He fixed his glance on the mother's
eyes.

"Come in!" he said, after a deliberate pause.

"Tatyana, go call Pyotr. Quick!"

The woman hastened away without looking at her guest. The mother
seated herself on the bench opposite the peasant and looked around--her
valise was not in sight. An oppressive stillness filled the hut,
broken only by the scarcely audible sputtering of the lamplight. The
face of the peasant, preoccupied and gloomy wavered in vague outline
before the eyes of the mother, and for some reason caused her dismal
annoyance.

"Well, why doesn't he say something? Quick!"

"Where's my valise?" Her loud, stern question coming suddenly was a
surprise to herself. The peasant shrugged his shoulders and
thoughtfully gave the indefinite answer:

"It's safe." He lowered his voice and continued gloomily: "Just now,
in front of the girl, I said on purpose that it was empty. No, it's not
empty. It's very heavily loaded."

"Well, what of it?"

The peasant rose, approached her, bent over her, and whispered: "Do you
know that man?"

The mother started, but answered firmly:

"I do."

Her laconic reply, as it were, kindled a light within her which
rendered everything outside clear. She sighed in relief. Shifting her
position on the bench, she settled herself more firmly on it, while the
peasant laughed broadly.

"I guessed it--when you made the sign--and he, too.