“All right.... What next?” said Andrey Ivanovich, a little surprised at the decided opinion of the expert.
“What next?” answered the wanderer sadly. “I wandered for a year. I fasted and wandered.... The worst was that my conscience bothered me; I didn’t know how to beg. I waited and waited for that year to end,—to go home, home, to my poor cell. I thought of the father superior as if he were my own father; I loved him so. Finally August twenty-ninth came. I went into the courtyard, you know, and somehow I felt badly. Our attendants came to the gate.... They knew me. ‘Wanderer Ivan, have you returned?’ ‘I have,’ was my reply. ‘Is my benefactor alive?’ ‘Too late,’ was the answer. ‘He was buried some time ago. He was deemed worthy; he went away with the collect of the Resurrection. He remembered you ... and wept.... He wanted to reward you.... We’ve got a new superior, ... a barbarian. Don’t let him see you?’ But,” he added, plaintively, “I can’t see Avtonomov.”
His voice betrayed his terror and sorrow.
V
Andrey Ivanovich stared into the darkness and suddenly he caught hold of my hand, exclaiming:
“Stop! We shouldn’t have come.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I told the truth. Don’t chase on after them! Wait for me.... I’ll run and see....”
He quickly disappeared in the darkness. I stayed with Ivan Ivanovich in the road. When the steps of the bootmaker died away, we heard merely the quiet noises of the night. The grass rustled gently; at times a rail whistled as it ran nervously from place to place. In the vague distance the frogs were croaking dreamily and playing in the swamp. Hardly visible clouds were rising.
“That’s just like him.... My comrade loves to walk at night,” complained Ivan Ivanovich. “What’s the use of it? Why not by day?”