Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/318

294, crawling along with a huge bundle on his back. The miller jumped up, pointed toward the window, and asked the two women:

"Who is that walking along there?"

"Why, that's our Yankel!"

"And what is he carrying?"

"A bundle from the city."

"Then why do you say I've been dreaming? Don't you see that the Jew has come back? I saw him at the mill a moment ago, carrying that very same bundle."

"And why shouldn't he have come back?"

"Because the devil carried him off last year. Khapun, you know."

Well, in a word, there was a great deal of amazement when the miller told of all that had happened to him. And in the meanwhile a crowd was beginning to collect in the road in front of the cottage; the people looked in at the window, and began making slanderous comments.

"Look at that!" they said. "There's a nice state of affairs! The miller comes tearing across the fields without a hat, without boots, all ragged and torn, and runs straight into the widow's cottage, and there he sits with them now!"

"Hey! Tell us, good man, whom have you come to see all dressed up like that? Is it Old Prisia, or young Galya?"

You will agree, I am sure, that no one can allow