"And perhaps some one is coming," said Kohanovski. "It may be Pan Grothus?"
"No-- Pan Grothus has gone to the Diet. If a man comes he will be unexpected."
"But the earth is soft, we shall not hear him."
"Well, a dog is barking under the window, so some one is coming."
"No one will drive in from that side, for the windows look into the garden."
"But the dog is not barking, he is howling."
That was the case really. The dog had barked once, twice, a third time, then the barking turned to a low, gloomy howling.
Pan Gideon quivered despite himself, for he remembered how years and years earlier in another place, at his house, which stood five miles from Pomorani, in Russia, dogs had howled in the same way before a sudden onrush of Tartars.
The thought came to Panna Anulka, that she had no cause to expect any one, and that should any man come to her from the darkness to that lighted mansion he would be late in his coming. But it seemed somehow strange to other guests, all the more as the first dog was joined by a second, and a double howl was heard now near that window. So they listened in disagreeable silence, which was broken only after a while by Martsian Krepetski,--
"A guest at whom the dogs howl is nothing to us," said he.