Page:Leo Tolstoi - Life Is Worth Living and Other Stories - tr. Adolphus Norraikow (1892).djvu/190

 Rh "Martin, ah! Martin, did you not know me?"

"Whom?" muttered Martin.

"Me," repeated the voice. "It is I," said Stepanovitch, smiling pleasantly as he advanced from the dark corner; and then like a cloud he vanished into space.

"And this is I," said another voice, when the woman with her child stepped forth. The woman also smiled, while the infant laughed gleefully; and they, too, quickly disappeared.

"And here are we," said a third voice; when both the old woman and the boy with an apple in his hand came forward. They also smiled, and instantly faded away.

Martin was now almost overcome with a feeling of joy more sweet than he had ever before experienced. Making the sign of the cross, he began to read the following passage, at which the Bible had accidentally opened:

"For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."