Page:Andreyev - The Little Angel (Knopf, 1916).djvu/60

 roof, and by it was a group of people teasing the village idiot Ilyusha.

"Give us a ha'penny," snuffled the idiot in a drawling voice, and evil, jeering voices replied all together:

"Will you chop up some wood?"

Ilyusha reviled foully and cynically, and the others laughed without mirth. A sunray broke through, yellow and anæmic, as though the sun were hopelessly sick; and the foggy Autumn distance became wider, and more melancholy.

"I'm sorry, Snapper!" Lelya gently let fall the words, and went back without looking round. It was not till she reached the station that she remembered that she had not said good-bye to Snapper.

Snapper long followed the track of the people as they went away, he ran as far as the station, and wet through and muddy, returned to the bungalow. There he performed one more new trick, which no one, however, was there to see. For the first time he went on to the verandah, stood on his hind legs, looked in at the glass door, and even scratched at it. But the rooms were all empty, and no one answered him.

A violent rain poured down, and on all sides the darkness of the long Autumn night began to close in. Quickly and dully it filled the empty bungalow: noiselessly it crept out from the shrubs and in company with the rain, poured down from the uninviting sky. On the verandah, from