Here Kalinin shuddered—then glanced at me with drawn features and chattering teeth, and stirred uneasily.
"Suppose we light a fire?" he ventured. "I am growing shivery all over. But first we must move outside."
The torn clouds were casting their shadows wearily athwart the sodden earth and glittering stones and silver-dusted herbage. Only on a single mountain top had a blur of mist settled like an arrested avalanche, and was resting there with its edges steaming. The sea too had grown calmer under the rain, and was splashing with more gentle mournfulness, even as the blue patches in the firmament had taken on a softer, warmer look, and stray sunbeams were touching upon land and sea in turn, and, where they chanced to fall upon herbage, causing pearls and emeralds to sparkle on every leaf, and kaleidoscopic tints to glow where the dark-blue sea reflected their generous radiance. Indeed, so goodly, so full of promise, was the scene that one might have supposed autumn to have fled away for ever before the wind and the rain, and beneficent summer to have been restored.
Presently through the moist, squelching sound of our footsteps, and the cheerful patter of the rain-drippings, Kalinin's narrative resumed its languid, querulous course:
"When, that evening, I opened the door to the doctor I could not bring myself to look him in the face—I could merely hang my head; whereupon, taking me by the chin, and raising it, he inquired:
"Why is your face so yellow? What is the matter with you?'
"Yes, a kind-hearted man was he, and one who had never failed to tip me well, and to speak to me with as much consideration as though I had not been a footman at all.
"'I am not in very good health,' I replied. 'I, I—'
"'Come, come!' was his interjection. 'After dinner I must look you over, and in the meanwhile, do keep up your spirits.'
"Then I realised that poison him I could not, but that the powder must be swallowed by myself—yes, by myself! Aye, over my heart a flash of lightning had gleamed, and shown me that now I was no longer following the road properly assigned me by fate.