Page:Iván Ilyitch and Other Stories (1887).djvu/135

 comfortable, but never to think about my guest. He thought about himself, but there was not the least care taken of the guest. And who was his guest? The Lord himself. If he had come to me, should I have done the same way?”

Avdyéitch rested his head upon both his arms, and did not notice how he fell asleep.

“Martuin!” suddenly seemed to sound in his ears.

Martuin started from his sleep: “Who is here?”

He turned around, glanced toward the door—no one.

Again he fell into a doze. Suddenly he plainly hears,—

“Martuin! Ah, Martuin! look to-morrow on the street. I am coming.”

Martuin awoke, rose from the chair, began to rub his eyes. He himself does not know whether he heard those words in his dream, or in reality. He turned down his lamp, and went to bed.

At daybreak next morning, Avdyéitch rose, made his prayer to God, lighted the stove, put on the shchi and the kasha, put the water in the samovar, put on his apron, and sat down by the window to work.

Avdyéitch is working, and at the same time thinking about all that had happened yesterday. He thinks both ways: now he thinks it was a dream, and now he thinks he really heard a voice. “Well,” he thinks, “such things have been.”

Martuin is sitting by the window, and does not work as much as he looks through the window: when any one passes by in boots that he does not know, he bends down, looks out of the window, in order to see, not only the feet, but also the face. The dvornik passed by in