Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/284

260 nails so that even your Motria won't know where your eyes and nose and mouth have been. Not only will you not have two sweethearts, not one will look at an eyeless creature like you."

What use to talk to her? The miller spat, jumped quickly over the hedge, and left the village in a rage. When he reached the crest of the hill from where there came to him the murmuring of the stream in the mill-race, he looked back and shook his fist.

And at that moment he heard the sound of a bell: ding, dong; ding, dong! Again Kadilo was ringing the hour of midnight from the village belfry.

The miller reached his mill. It was all drenched with dew; the moon was shining, the wood was shimmering, and a bittern, that foul bird, was awake and booming in the reeds, sleepless, as if it were waiting for some one, as if it were calling up some one out of the pond.

Dread fell upon Philip the miller.

"Hey! Gavrilo!" he shouted.

"Oo-oo, oo-oo!" answered the bittern from the marsh, but not a squeak came from the mill.

"Oh, the confounded scapegrace! He's run off after the girls again." So thought the miller, and somehow did not feel like going alone into the empty