e coffin. Vaxin himself
had asked for a saucer and shown the young ladies how to converse
with spirits. He had called up among others the spirit of his
deceased uncle, Klavdy Mironitch, and had mentally asked him:

"Has not the time come for me to transfer the ownership of our house
to my wife?"

To which his uncle's spirit had replied:

"All things are good in their season."

"There is a great deal in nature that is mysterious and . . .
terrible . . ." thought Vaxin, as he got into bed. "It's not the
dead but the unknown that's so horrible."

It struck one o'clock. Vaxin turned over on the other side and
peeped out from beneath the bedclothes at the blue light of the
lamp burning before the holy ikon. The flame flickered and cast a
faint light on the ikon-stand and the big portrait of Uncle Klavdy
that hung facing his bed.

"And what if the ghost of Uncle Klavdy should appear this minute?"
flashed through Vaxin's mind. "But, of course, that's impossible."

Ghosts are, we all know, a superstition, the offspring of undeveloped
intelligence, but Vaxin, nevertheless, pulled the bed-clothes over
his head, and shut his eyes very tight. The corpse that turned round
in its coffin came back to his mind, and the figures of his deceased
mother-in-law, of a colleague who had hanged himself, and of a girl
who had drowned herself, rose before his imagination. . . . Vaxin
began trying to dispel these gloomy ideas, but the more he tried
to drive them away the more haunting the figures and fearful fancies
became. He began to feel frightened.

"Hang it all!" he thought. "Here I am afraid in the dark like a
child! Idiotic!"

Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . he heard the clock in the next
room. The church-bell chimed the hour in the churchyard close by.
The bell tolled slowly, depressingly, mournfully. . . . A cold chill
ran down Vaxin's neck and spine. He fancied he heard someone breathing
heavily over his head, as though Uncle Klavdy had stepped out of
his frame and was bending over his nephew. . . . Vaxin felt unbearably
frightened. He clenched his teeth and held his breath in terror.

At last, when a cockchafer flew in at the open window and began
buzzing over his bed, he could bear it no longer and gave a violent
tug at the bellrope.

"Dmitri Osipitch, _was wollen Sie?_" he heard the voice of the
German governess at his door a moment later.

"Ah, it's you, Rosalia Karlovna!" Vaxin cried, delighted. "Why do
you troubl