We walked along in the darkness.... A dog barked behind us; I looked around and saw in the darkness two or three lights in the village, but they soon disappeared.
IV
It was a quiet, starless night. The horizon could still be traced as an indistinct line beneath the clouds, but still lower hung a thick mist, endless, shapeless, without form or details.
We walked on quite a while in silence. The wanderer panted timidly and tried to smother his cough.
“I don’t see Avtonomov,” he kept saying, and he gazed helplessly in the blackness of the night.
“We can’t see him.... But he sees us, by heavens,” said Andrey Ivanovich, spitefully and ominously.
The road seemed to be a confused streak, like a bridge across an abyss.... Everything around was black and indistinct. Was there or was there not a light streak on the horizon? There was not a trace of it now. Was it so short a time, since we were in that noisy hut with the laughter and conversation?... Will there be any end to this night, to this field? Were we moving ahead or was the road like an endless ribbon slipping by under our feet while we remained treading in the same spot, in the same enchanted patch of darkness? An involuntary, timid joy sprang up in my soul when an unseen brook began to babble ahead of us, when this murmur increased and then died away behind us, or when a sudden breath of wind stirred the scarcely visible clumps of willows beside the road and then died away, a sign that we had passed them....
“It’s night now all right,” said Andrey Ivanovich quietly, and this was very unusual for him. “A man’s a fool to walk the roads a night like this. And what are we after, I’d like to know. We worked during the day, rested, drank our tea, prayed—for sleep. No, I don’t like it—and then we started along the roads. It’s better for us. Here it’s midnight and we haven’t crossed ourselves yet. We certainly pray!...”
I made no answer. Thoughts of repentance seemed still to be running through the head of Andrey Ivanovich.
“Women can teach us a little,” he said sternly. “We don’t stay at home. What do we want?...”