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 scarcely see anything twenty paces away. Tyeglev and I went up to the hurdle and stood still.

“Here,” he said and bowed his head. “Stand still, keep quiet and listen!”

Like him I strained my ears, and I heard nothing except the ordinary, extremely faint but universal murmur, the breathing of the night. Looking at each other in silence from time to time we stood motionless for several minutes and were just on the point of going on.

“Ilyusha . . . ” I fancied I heard a whisper from behind the hurdle.

I glanced at Tyeglev but he seemed to have heard nothing — and still held his head bowed.

“Ilyusha . . . ah, Ilyusha,” sounded more distinctly than before — so distinctly that one could tell that the words were uttered by a woman.

We both started and stared at each other.

“Well?” Tyeglev asked me in a whisper. “You won’t doubt it now, will you?”

“Wait a minute,” I answered as quietly. “It proves nothing. We must look whether there isn’t anyone. Some practical joker. . . . ”

I jumped over the fence — and went in the direction from which, as far as I could judge, the voice came.

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.
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