Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/238

Tales from Tolstoi

There stood Efim, praying and looking straight in front of him into the chapel where was the very Sepulchre, and above the Sepulchre burned thirty-six lamps. There stood and looked Efim, when through his head flashed the thought, "What wonder is this?" Beneath the very lamps, in front of them all, stood an old pilgrim in a coarse cotton kaftan, and he had a shining baldness all over his head, just like Ehsyei Bodrov. Tis much like Elisyei," he thought; "but it cannot be he. He could not have arrived here before me. Another ship does not follow us for a whole week. He could not have come on so quickly, and he was not in our ship. I saw all the pilgrims."

While Efim was thinking thus the old pilgrim began to pray, and he bowed low three times; first he bowed before God, and then he bowed to the orthodox worshippers on both sides of him. And when the old man turned his head to the right, Efim recognised him at once.

Tis he, indeed, Bodrov; his beard is blackish and curly, and a little greyish on the tips of the whiskers. And the brows, and the eyes, and the nose—all the features are his. It is Elisyei Bodrov's very self."

Efim rejoiced that his comrade had come, and marvelled how Elisyei could have got there before him.

"Ah, Bodrov must have crept through somehow: he must have fallen in with some man who showed 188