"You say you heard a knocking?"

"It was not only knocking I heard."

"Why, what else?"

Tyeglev bent forward and bit his lips. He was evidently hesitating.

"I was called!" he brought out at last in a low voice and turned away
his face.

"You were called? Who called you?"

"Someone...." Tyeglev still looked away. "A woman whom I had hitherto
only believed to be dead ... but now I know it for certain."

"I swear, Ilya Stepanitch," I cried, "this is all your imagination!"

"Imagination?" he repeated. "Would you like to hear it for yourself?"

"Yes."

"Then come outside."

VIII

I hurriedly dressed and went out of the hut with Tyeglev. On the side
opposite to it there were no houses, nothing but a low hurdle fence
broken down in places, beyond which there was a rather sharp slope
down to the plain. Everything was still shrouded in mist and one could