ootsteps through the wood. It grew darker and darker; it
must be, he thought, the evening deepening and no storm.

All at once he started; he had heard a sound, a high pipe. Was it the
kingfisher? He paused and listened. Distinctly, and not far off in the
undergrowth, he heard a laugh, a woman's laugh. It flashed across his
mind that it might be Tatiana, but it was not her laugh. Something
rustled in the bushes to the left of him; he followed the rustling and
it led him through the bushes--he had now passed the ditch--to the river
bank. The sun had set behind the woods from which he had just emerged;
the sky was as grey as the water, and there was no reflection of the
sunset in the east. Except the water and the trees he saw nothing; there
was not a sound to be heard, not a ripple on the river, not a whisper
from the woods.

Then all at once the stillness was broken again by quick rippling laughs
immediately behind him. He turned sharply round, and saw a woman in the
bushes: her eyes were large and green and sad; her hair straggling and
dishevelled; she was dressed in reeds and leaves; she was very pale. She
stared at him fixedly, and smiled, showing gleaming teeth, and when she
smiled there was no light nor laughter in her eyes, which remained sad
and green and glazed like those of a drowned person. She laughed again
and ran into the bushes. Petrushka ran after her, but although he was
quite close to her he lost all trace of her immediately. It was as if
she had vanished under the earth or into the air.

"It's a Russalka," thought Petrushka, and he shivered. Then he added
to himself, with the pride of the new scepticism he had learnt from
the factory hands: "There is no such thing; only women believe in such
things. It was some drunken woman."

Petrushka walked quickly back to the edge of the wood, where he had left
his cart, and drove home. The next day was Sunday, and Tatiana noticed
that he was different--moody, melancholy, and absent-minded. She asked
him what was the matter; he said his head ached. Towards five o'clock he
told her--they were standing outside her cottage--that he was obliged to
go to the river to work.

"To-day is holiday," she said quietly.

"I left something there yesterday: one of my tools. I must fetch it," he
explained.

Tatiana looked at him, and her intuition told her, firstly, that this
was not true, and, secondly, that it was not well for Petrushka to go to
the river. She begged hi