'Why should one meet a man in the wood at night time?' he answered evasively, eyeing me suspiciously from head to foot. 'You often think it's a man you know, and you talk to him as if you knew him, and then it turns out in the end not to be a man at all.'

'What are you doing here so late?'

'I am going home; it's a holiday to-morrow. I have a long way to go from here to Babylon[19] for fishing,—thirty versts. You know we're poor folk, we live by fishing,—we haven't any horses; so one is always in a boat, always in a boat. As I was dragging it through the wood I cut my foot, so I've got behindhand.'

'You have cut your foot?'

'It isn't much, for I've stopped the bleeding.'

'Then perhaps it was you whistling and calling?' I asked, remembering a strange sound I had heard a moment before.

'I!—No!' He was silent, and I noticed him lean over the boat, and cross himself.

'And what are you doing here?' he asked in his turn.

I hesitated.

'Looking for ducks,' I lied, not wishing to frighten him more.