cried at length, yet more angrily, "or I will give you to the ghaóuls,
(devils!) Do you hear how they are scratching at the roof, and knocking
at the door for you?"

It was a stormy night; a thick rain pattering on the flat roof which
served as a ceiling, and the roaring of the wind in the chimney,
answered to her hoarse voice. The boy became quiet, and straining his
eyes, hearkened in a fright. It really seemed as if some one was
knocking at the door. The old woman became frightened in her turn: her
inseparable companion, a dirty dog, lifted up his head from sleep, and
began to bark in a most pitiful voice. But meanwhile the knocking at the
door became louder, and an unknown voice cried sternly from without,
"Atch kapini, akhirin akhirici!" (open the door for the end of ends.)
The old woman turned pale. "Allah bismallah!" she exclaimed, now
addressing heaven, then threatening the dog, and then quieting the
crying child. "Sh, accursed beast! Hold your tongue, I say, kharamzáda,
(good-for-nothing son of shame!) Who is there? What honest man will
enter, when it is neither day nor dawn, into the house of a poor old
woman? If you are Shaitán, go to neighbour Kitchkína. It has been long
time to show her the road to hell! If you are a tchaóuth,
(tax-gatherer,) who, to say the truth, is rather worse than Shaitán,
then go about your business. My son-in-law is not at home; he serves as
nóuker at Ammalát Bek's; and the Bek has long ago freed me from taxes;
and as for treating idle travellers, don't expect from me even an egg,
much less a duck. Is it in vain, then, that I suckled Ammalát?"

"Will you open, you devil's distaff?" impatiently exclaimed the voice,
"or I will not leave you a plank of this door for your coffin."

The feeble doors shook on their hinges.