We went out, took a cab to one of the gates of the town. At the gate we
got out. Kolosov went on in front very quickly; I followed him. We
walked along the highroad. After we had gone three-quarters of a mile,
Kolosov turned off. Meanwhile night had come on. On the right in the
fog were the twinkling lights, the innumerable church-spires of the
immense city; on the left, two white horses were grazing in a meadow
skirting the forest: before us stretched fields covered with greyish
mists. I followed Kolosov in silence. He stopped all at once, stretched
his hand out in front of him, and said: 'Here, this is where we are
going.' I saw a small dark house; two little windows showed a dim light
in the fog. 'In this house,' Kolosov went on, 'lives a man called
Sidorenko, a retired lieutenant, with his sister, an old maid, and his
daughter. I shall pass you off as a relation of mine--you must sit
down and play at cards with him.' I nodded without a word.

I wanted to show Kolosov that I could be as silent as Gavrilov.... But
I will own I was suffering agonies of curiosity. As we went up to the
steps of the house, I caught sight, at a lighted window, of the slender
figure of a girl.... She seemed waiting for us and vanished at once. We
went into a dark and narrow passage. A crooked, hunchback old woman
came to meet us, and looked at me with astonishment. 'Is Ivan
Semyonitch at home?' inquired Kolosov. 'He is at home.'... 'He is at
home!' called a deep masculine voice from within. We went into the
dining-room, if dining-room one can call the long, rather dirty room; a
small old piano huddled unassumingly in a corner beside the stove; a
few chairs stood out along the walls which had once been yellow. In the
middle of the room stood a tall, stooping man of fifty, in a greasy
dressing-gown. I looked at him more attentively: a morose looking
countenance, hair standing up like a brush, a low forehead, grey eyes,