"Leave off!" cried Ludmilla, timorously.
Looking at her sidewise out of his black eyes, Kostrom told a story about the hunter Kalinin, a grayhaired old man with cunning eyes, a man of evil fame, known to all the village. He had not long been dead, but they had not buried him in the earth in the graveyard, but had placed his coffin above ground, away from the other graves. The coffin was black, on tall trestles; on the lid were drawn in white paint a cross, a spear, a reed, and two bones. Every night, as soon as it grew dark, the old man rose from his coffin and walked about the cemetery, looking for something, till the first cock crowed.
"Don't talk about such dreadful things!" begged Ludmilla.
"Nonsense!" cried Tchurka, breaking away from her brother. "What are you telling lies for? I saw them bury the coffin myself, and the one above ground is simply a monument. As to a dead man walking about, the drunken blacksmith set the idea afloat." Kostrom, without looking at him, suggested:
"Go and sleep in the cemetery; then you will see." They began to quarrel, and Ludmilla, shaking her head sadly, asked:
"Mamochka, do dead people walk about at night?" "They do," answered her mother, as if the question had called her back from a distance.
The son of the shopkeeper Valek, a tall, stout, red-faced youth of twenty, came to us, and, hearing what we were disputing about, said:
"I will give three greven and ten cigarettes to whichever of you three will sleep till daylight on the coffin, and I will pull the ears of the one who is afraid—as long as he likes. Well?"
We were all silent, confused, and Ludmilla's mother said:
"What nonsense! What do you mean by putting the children up to such nonsense?"