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Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
page 18 of 250 (07%)
I felt the earth soft and crumbling under my feet; long ridges
stretched before me vanishing into the mist. I was in the kitchen
garden. But nothing was stirring around me or before me. Everything
seemed spellbound in the numbness of sleep. I went a few steps
further.

"Who is there?" I cried as wildly as Tyeglev had.

"Prrr-r-r!" a startled corn-crake flew up almost under my feet and
flew away as straight as a bullet. Involuntarily I started.... What
foolishness!

I looked back. Tyeglev was in sight at the spot where I left him. I
went towards him.

"You will call in vain," he said. "That voice has come to us--to
me--from far away."

He passed his hand over his face and with slow steps crossed the road
towards the hut. But I did not want to give in so quickly and went
back into the kitchen garden. That someone really had three times
called "Ilyusha" I could not doubt; that there was something plaintive
and mysterious in the call, I was forced to own to myself.... But who
knows, perhaps all this only appeared to be unaccountable and in
reality could be explained as simply as the knocking which had
agitated Tyeglev so much.

I walked along beside the fence, stopping from time to time and
looking about me. Close to the fence, at no great distance from our
hut, there stood an old leafy willow tree; it stood out, a big dark
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