"The wood!"—he gives himself a twist with a bitter smile—"my wife went into the wood the evening before last, to gather berries, and they marched her out and treated her to the whip."
"There is the river,"—I want to take him away from his sad thoughts.
His pale face grew paler.
"The river? In the summer it took one of my children."
I hurried away from the luckless home.
——
THE MADMAN
I returned to my lodgings quite unnerved, and lay a long time on the hard sofa without closing an eye.... A noise wakes me. Something is stealing in to me through the window. I see on the window ledge two long, bony, dirty hands, and there raises itself from behind them an unkempt head with two gleaming eyes in a livid face.
"Won't you enter me?" asks the head, softly.
I do not know how to answer. He, meanwhile, has taken silence for consent, and stands in the middle of the room.