I could not understand why it was a good thing. When we went to bed Sascha said to me with unusual gentleness:
"Don't put out the lamp!"
"Are you afraid?"
He covered his head with the blanket, and lay silent a long time. The night was very quiet, as if it were listening for something, waiting for something. It seemed to me that the next minute a bell rang out, and suddenly the whole town was running and shouting in a great terrified uproar.
Sascha put his nose out of the blanket and suggested softly:
"Let's go and lie on the stove together."
"It is hot there."
After a silence he said:
"How suddenly she went off, did n't she? I am sure she was a witch. I can't get to sleep."
"Nor I, either."