THE DAY OF ATONEMENT
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT
A TALE OF LITTLE RUSSIA[I]
The lights are out, the moon is rising.The were-wolf in the wood is feeding.—Shevchenko.
The lights are out, the moon is rising.The were-wolf in the wood is feeding.—Shevchenko.
The lights are out, the moon is rising.The were-wolf in the wood is feeding.
The lights are out, the moon is rising.
The were-wolf in the wood is feeding.
—Shevchenko.
—Shevchenko.
Listento me, man; go out of your khata on a clear night, or better still walk to the top of some little hill, and look well at the sky and the earth. Watch the bright moon climbing the heavens, and the stars winking and twinkling, and the light clouds of mist rising from the earth and wandering off somewhere one behind the other like belated travellers on a night journey. The woods will lie as if bewitched, listening to the spells that rise from them after the midnight hour, and the sleepy river will flow murmuring by you, whispering to the sycamoreson its banks. Then tell me after that if anything, if any miracle, is not possible in this khata of God’s which we call the wide world.
Everything is possible. Take, for instance, an adventure that happened to a friend of mine, the miller from Novokamensk. If no one has told you the story already, I will tell it to you now, only please don’t make me swear that every word is true. I won’t swear to a thing, for though I got it from the miller himself, I don’t know to this day whether it really happened to him or not.
But whether it’s true or not, I shall tell it to you as I heard it.
One evening the miller was returning from vespers in Novokamensk, which was about three versts, not more, from his mill. For some reason the miller was a little out of temper, though he himself could not have said why. Everything had gone well in the church, and our miller, who could shout with the best, had read the prayers so loudly and so fast that the good people had been astonished.
“How he does bawl, that son of a gun!” they had exclaimed with the deepest respect. “You can’t understand one word he says. He’s a regular wheel, he is; he turns and spins and you know he has spokes in him, but you can’t see a single one, no matter how closely you look. His reading sounds like an iron wheel rumbling over a stony road; you can’t catch a word of it to save your life.”
The miller heard what the people were saying among themselves, and it made him glad.Heknew how to work for the glory of God, he did! He swung his tongue as a lusty lad swings a flail on a threshing floor, till he was parched to the bottom of his throat and his eyes were popping out of his head.
The priest took him home with him after church, gave him tea, and set a full bottle of herb brandy before him, and this was afterwards taken away empty. The moon was floating high above the fields, and was staring down into the swift little Stony River when the miller left the priest’s house and started home to his mill.
Some of the villagers were already asleep; some were sitting in their khatas eating their suppers by the light of a tallow-dip, and some had been tempted out into the street by the warm, clear autumn night. The old people were sitting at the doors of their khatas, but the lasses and lads had gone out under the hedges where the heavy shade of the cherry trees hid them from view, and only their low voices could be heard in various places, with an occasional peal of suppressed laughter, and now and then the incautious kiss of a young couple. Yes, many things can happen in the dense shade of a cherry tree on such a clear, warm night!
But though the miller could not see the villagers, they could see him very well because he was walkingdown the middle of the street in the full light of the moon. And so they occasionally called out to him as he passed:
“Good evening, Mr. Miller! Aren’t you coming from the priest’s? Is it at his house you have been such a long time?”
Every one knew that he could not have been anywhere else, but the miller liked the question, and, slackening his pace, he would answer a little proudly each time:
“Yes, yes, I’ve made him a little visit!” and then he would walk on more puffed-up than ever.
On the other hand, some of the people sat as silent as mice under the eaves of their houses, and only hoped he would go by quickly and not see where they were hidden. But the miller was not the man to pass or forget people who owed him for flour or for grinding, or who simply had borrowed money from him. No use for them to sit out of sight in the dark, as silent as if they had taken a mouthful of water! The miller would stop in front of them every time and say:
“Good evening! Are you there? You can hold your tongues or not as you like, but get ready to pay me your debts, because your time will be up early to-morrow morning. And I won’t wait for the money, I promise you!”
And then he would walk on down the street with his shadow running beside him, so black, so very black,that the miller, who was a bookman and always ready to use his brain if need be, said to himself:
“Goodness, how black my shadow is! It really is strange. When a man’s overcoat is whiter than flour why should his shadow be blacker than soot?”
At this point in his reflections he reached the inn kept by Yankel the Jew, which stood on a little hill not far from the village. The Sabbath had been over since sunset, but the inn-keeper was not at home; only Kharko was there, the Jew’s servant, who took his place on Sabbaths and feast-days. Kharko lit his master’s candles for him and collected his debts on each Hebrew holiday, for the Jews, as every one knows, strictly observe the rules of their faith. Do you think a Jew would light a candle or touch money on a holiday? Not he! It would be a sin. Kharko the servant did all that for the inn-keeper, and he, his wife, and his children, only followed him sharply with their eyes to see that no stray five or ten copeck pieces wandered into his pocket by accident instead of into the till.
“They’re cunning people!” thought the miller to himself. “Oh, they’re very cunning! They know how to please their God and catch every penny at the same time. Yes, they’re clever people, far cleverer than we are, there’s no use denying it!”
He paused on the little patch of earth at the inn door trampled hard by the numberless human feetthat jostled each other there every week day and shouted:
“Yankel! Hey, Yankel! Are you at home or not?”
“He isn’t at home, can’t you see that?” answered the servant from behind the counter.
“Where is he, then?”
“Where should he be? In the city of course,” answered the servant. “Don’t you know what to-day is?”
“No, what is it?”
“Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement!”
“Ah, so that’s the explanation!” thought the miller.
And I must tell you that even though Kharko was a common servant and the servant of a Jew at that, he had been a soldier, and could write, and was a very proud person. He liked to turn up his nose and give himself airs, especially before the miller. He could read in church no worse than the miller himself, except that he had a cracked voice and talked through his nose. In reading the prayers he always managed to keep up with Philip the miller, but in reading the Acts he was left far behind. But he never yielded an inch. If the miller said one thing, he always said another. If the miller said “I don’t know,” the servant would answer “I do.” A disagreeable fellow he was! So now he was delighted because hehad said something that had made the miller scratch his head under his hat.
“Perhaps you don’t know even yet what day this is?”
“How can I keep track of every Jewish holiday? Am I a servant of Jews?” retorted the miller angrily.
“Every holiday, indeed! That’s just it; this isn’t like every holiday. They only have one like this every year. And let me tell you something: no other people in the whole world have a holiday like this one.”
“You don’t say so!”
“You’ve heard about Khapun, I suppose?”
“Aha!”
The miller only whistled. Of course, he might have guessed it! And he peeped in through the window of the Jewish khata. The floor was strewn with hay and straw; in two and three branched candlesticks slender tallow candles were burning; he could hear a humming that seemed to come from several huge, lusty bees. It was Yankel’s young second Wife and a few Jewish children mumbling and humming their unintelligible prayers with closed eyes. There was, however, something remarkable about these prayers; it seemed as if each one of these Jews were possessed by some alien creature, sitting there in him weeping and lamenting, remembering something and praying for something. But to whom were they praying, and for what were they asking? No one could have said.Only whatever it was, it seemed to have no connection either with the inn or with money.
The miller was filled with pity and sadness and dread as he listened to the prayers of the Jews. He glanced at the servant, who could also hear the humming through the door of the inn, and said:
“They’re praying! And so you say Yankel has gone to the city?”
“Yes.”
“And what did he want to do that for? Supposing Khapun should happen to get him?”
“I don’t know why he went,” answered the servant. “If it had been me, though I’ve fought with every heathen tribe under the sun and got a medal for it, no silver roubles on earth could have tempted me away from here. I should have stayed in my khata; Khapun would hardly snatch him out of his hut.”
“And why not? If he wanted to catch a man he’d get him in his khata as well as anywhere else, I suppose.”
“You think he would, do you? If you wanted to buy a hat or a pair of gloves, where would you go for them?”
“Where should I go but to a store?”
“And why would you go to a store?”
“What a question! Because there are plenty of hats there.”
“Very well. And if you looked into the synagoguenow you would see Jews a-plenty in there. They are jostling one another, and weeping and screaming so that the whole city from one end to another can hear their lamentations. Where the gnats are there the birds go. Khapun would be a fool if he trotted about hunting and rummaging through all the woods and villages. He has only one day in the year, and do you think he would waste it like that? Some villages have Jews in them, and some haven’t.”
“Well, there aren’t many that haven’t!”
“I know there aren’t many that haven’t, but there are some. And then, he can pick and choose so much better out of a crowd.”
Both men were silent. The miller was thinking that the servant had caught him again with his clever tongue, and he was feeling uncomfortable for the second time. The humming and weeping and lamenting of the Jews still came to them through the windows of the hut.
“Perhaps they are praying for the old man?”
“Perhaps they are. Anything is possible.”
“Does it really ever happen?” asked the miller, wishing to tease the servant, and at the same time feeling a twinge of human pity for the Jew. “Perhaps it’s only gossip. You know how people will gabble silly nonsense, and how every one believes them.”
These words displeased Kharko.
“Yes, people do gabble nonsense; like you, for instance!”he answered. “Do you think I invented the story myself, or my father or my father-in-law, when every Christian knows it is true?”
“Well, but have you seen it happen yourself?” asked the miller irritably, stung by the servant’s scornful words.
Now you must know that when the miller was in a passion he sometimes said that he didn’t believe in the Devil himself, and wouldn’t, until he saw him sitting in the palm of his hand. And he was flying into a passion now.
“Have you seen it happen yourself?” he repeated. “If you haven’t, don’t say it’s true, do you hear?”
Then the servant hung his head, and even went so far as to cough. Though he had been a soldier and was a lively fellow, he could sing very small at times.
“No, I haven’t seen it myself, I won’t tell you a lie. And you, Mr. Miller, have you ever seen the city of Kiev?”
“No, I haven’t: I won’t tell you a lie, either.”
“But Kiev is there just the same!”
When he heard it put as clearly as that, the miller’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
“Whatever is true, is true,” he assented. “Yes, Kiev is there, though I haven’t seen it. One certainly ought to believe what honest folks say. You see, I should like to—I want to ask you who told you the story?”
“Who told it to me? Bah! Who told you about Kiev?”
“Tut, tut, what a tongue you have! It’s sharper than a razor; may it shrivel in your head!”
“There’s no reason why my tongue should shrivel in my head. You’d better believe what people say when every one says it. If every one says it, it must be true. If it weren’t true, every one wouldn’t say it; only magpies like you would say it, so there!”
“Tut, tut, tut! For Heaven’s sake stop a minute! You rattle out your words like a pestle in a mortar. I see I was on the wrong track, but I only wanted to know how the story began.”
“It began because it happens every year. Whatever happens people will talk about; what doesn’t happen isn’t worth talking about.”
“What a fellow you are! Wait a minute, let me catch your prattle by the tail; you whirl like a wild mare in a bog. Only just tell me what really takes place, that’s all!”
“Eh hey, so you don’t know, I see, what takes place on the Day of Atonement?”
“I used to know, and that’s why I didn’t ask. I used to hear people chattering like you about Khapun, Khapun, but what the sense of it was I never could make out.”
“Then you ought to have said so at once, and I should have told you long ago. I don’t like proud people who, when they want a drink of gorelka,say they’d drink water if it didn’t taste so bad. If you want to know what happens I’ll tell you, because I’ve been about the world and am not a stay-at-home like you. I have lived in the city for more than a year, and this is the first time I have ever worked for a Jew.”
“And isn’t it a sin to work for a Jew?” asked the miller.
“It would be for any one else; a soldier can do anything. We get a paper given to us that says so.”
“Can a piece of paper really——”
Then the soldier began telling the miller very affably all about Khapun and how he carries off one Jew a year on this day.
And if you don’t know it, I might as well tell you that Khapun is a regular Hebrew devil. He is just like ours in every way, black, with horns just like him, and he has wings like a huge bat; the only difference is that he wears ringlets and a skull cap, and only has power over Jews. If a Christian meets him at midnight in the desert, or even on the shore of a pond, he runs away like a scared dog. But he can do what he likes with the Jews, so he catches one every year and carries him away.
And Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the day fixed for him to make his choice. Long before that day comes the Jews weep and tear their clothes, and even put ashes out of their stoves on their heads for some reason or other. On the evening of the daythey bathe in the rivers and ponds, and as soon as the sun goes down the poor wretches all go to their churches, and you never heard in your life such screams as come from there then! They all bawl at the top of their lungs, keeping their eyes shut tight with terror all the time. Then, as soon as the sky grows dark and the evening star comes out, Khapun comes flying from where he lives, and hovers over the church. He beats on the windows with his wings, and looks in to choose his prey. But when midnight comes, that’s when the Jews begin to get really frightened. They light all the candles to give themselves courage, fall down on the floor, and begin to scream as if some one were cutting their throats. And while they are lying there squirming Khapun flies into the room in the shape of a great crow, and they all feel the cold wind of his wings blowing across their hearts. The Jew whom Khapun has already spotted through the window feels the devil’s claws sinking into his back. Ugh! It makes one’s flesh creep even to tell of it, so just think what the poor Jew must feel! Of course he yells as loud as ever he can. But who can hear him when all the rest of them are yelling like lunatics, too? And maybe one of his neighbours does hear him, and is only glad it isn’t himself who is in such a sorry plight.
Kharko himself had heard more than once the pitiful, clear, long-drawn notes of a trumpet floatingout over the city. It was a novice in the synagogue trumpeting out a farewell call to his unfortunate brother, while the rest of the Jews were putting on their shoes in the entry—Jews always go into church in their stocking feet—or standing in little groups in the moonlight, whispering together on tip-toe, staring up at the sky. And when the last man has gone, one lonely pair of shoes is left lying in the entry, waiting for its owner. Ah, those shoes will have to wait a long time, for at that very moment Khapun is flying with their owner high over woods and fields, over valleys and hills and plains, flapping his wings, and keeping well out of sight of Christian eyes. The accursed one is glad when the night is cloudy and dark. But when it is clear and still like to-night, with the moon shining as bright as day, the devil’s work may very well come to naught.
“And why?” asked the miller, trembling lest the talkative Kharko should begin poking insults at him again. But this time the servant answered quietly enough:
“Well, you see, any Christian, no matter if he’s stupid, like you, can call to the devil: ‘Drop it! It is mine!’ and Khapun will drop the Jew at once. The devil will flutter his wings, and fly away with a shrill cry like a wounded hawk, to be left without prey for a year. The Jew will fall to the ground. It will be lucky for him if he wasn’t too high up and if he falls into a bog or some other soft spot. Ifhe doesn’t, no one will profit by his fall, neither he nor the devil.”
“So that’s how it is!” said the miller, staring nervously at the sky, in which the moon was shining with all its might. The heavens were clear; only one little cloudlet like a bit of black down was flying swiftly along between the moon and the wood that shrouded the river bank. It was a cloud, of course, but one thing about it seemed strange to the miller. Not a breath of wind was stirring, the leaves on the bushes were motionless as if in a trance, and yet the cloud was flying like a bird straight toward the city.
“Come here; let me show you something!” the miller called to the servant.
Kharko came out of the inn, and leaning against the door post, said calmly:
“Well, what is it? A fine thing you have found to show me! That’s a cloud, that is; let it alone!”
“Take another look at it! Is there any wind blowing?”
“Well, well, well! Thatisfunny!” said the servant, perplexed. “It’s making straight for the city, too.”
And both men scratched their heads and craned their necks.
The same humming sounds came to their ears through the window as before; the miller caught a glimpse of lugubrious yellow faces, closed eyes, andmotionless lips. The little Jews were crying and wriggling, and once more the miller seemed to see an alien presence in them weeping and praying for something unknown, long lost, and already half forgotten.
“Well, I must be going home,” said the miller, collecting his wits. “And yet I wanted to pay Yankel a few copecks.”
“That’s all right. I can take them for him,” said the servant, without looking at the miller.
But the miller pretended not to have heard this last remark. The sum was not so small that he cared to intrust it to a servant, much less to a vagabond soldier. With a sum like that the fellow might easily kick up his heels, as the saying is, and run away, not only out of the village, but even out of the District. If he did that, look for the wind in the fields, you would find it sooner than Kharko!
“Good night!” said the miller at last.
“Good night! And I’ll take the money if you’ll give it to me!”
“Don’t bother; I can give it to him myself.”
“Do as you like. But if I took it you wouldn’t be bothered about it any more. Well, well, it’s time to close the inn. You’re the last dog that’ll be round to-night, I’ll be bound.”
The servant scratched his back on the door post, whistled not very agreeably after the miller, and bolted the door on which were depicted in white painta quart measure, a wine-glass, and a tin mug. Meanwhile the miller descended the hill, and walked down the road in his long white overcoat, with his coal-black shadow running beside him as before.
But the miller was not thinking of his shadow now. His thoughts were of something far different.
The miller had not gone more than a hundred yards when he heard a rustling and fluttering that sounded like two large birds taking flight from behind the hedge. But it was not a pair of birds; it was only a lad and a lass, startled by the miller’s sudden appearance out of the darkness. The lad, it seemed, was not to be frightened. Creeping into the shadows so that the two white figures were barely visible under the cherry trees, he put his arm firmly around the girl, and continued his low-toned discourse. A few yards farther on the miller heard something that halted him with annoyance.
“Hey, you there! I don’t know what your name is——” he cried. “But you might wait until I had gone by to do your kissing. Your smacks can be heard all over the village.”
And he walked right up to the hedge.
“You cur you, what do you mean by poking your nose into other people’s affairs?” a lad answeredout of the darkness. “Wait a minute, I’ll kiss you on the nose with my fist! I’ll teach you to interfere with people!”
“Come, come, never mind!” said the miller, stepping back. “One would think you were doing something important! You’re a bad lad, you are, to smack a girl like that; you make a man envious. Oh, what are people coming to!”
He stood still for a moment, thought a bit, scratched his head, and finally turned aside, threw his leg over the hedge, and crossed a field to a widow’s cottage that stood a little way back from the road in the shade of a tall poplar tree.
The khata was a tiny, lop-sided affair, crumbling and falling to pieces. Its one little window was so minute that it would have been almost invisible had the night been at all dark. But now the whole cottage was glowing in the moonlight; its straw roof was shining like gold, its walls seemed to be made of silver, and the little window was blinking like a dark eye.
No light shone behind it. Probably the old woman and her daughter had no fuel and nothing to cook for supper.
The miller paused a moment, then knocked twice at the window and went a few steps aside.
He had not long to wait before two plump girlish arms were wound tightly around his neck, and something glowed among his whiskers that felt very muchlike two lips pressed to his mouth. Hey ho, what more is there to tell! If you have ever been kissed like that you know yourself how it feels. If you haven’t, it’s no use trying to tell you.
“Oh, Philipko, my darling for whom I have longed!” crooned the girl. “You have come, you have come! And I have been waiting so wearily for you. I thought I should parch up with longing, like grass without water.”
“Eh hey, she hasn’t parched up, though, thank God!” thought the miller, as he pressed the girl’s not emaciated form to his breast. “Thank God, she is all right yet!”
“And when shall we have the wedding, Philip?” asked the girl with her hands still lying on Philip’s shoulders, while she devoured him with burning eyes as dark as an autumn night. “Saint Philip’s day will soon be here.”
This speech was less to the miller’s liking than the girl’s kisses.
“So that’s what she’s driving at!” thought he. “Ah, Philip, Philip, now you’re going to catch it!”
But he summoned all the courage he had, and, turning his eyes away, answered:
“What a hurry you’re in, Galya, I declare! Thinking about the wedding already, are you? How can we get married when I am a miller and may soon be the richest man in the village, and you are only a poor widow’s daughter?”
The girl staggered back at these words as if a snake had bitten her. She jumped away from Philip and laid her hand on her heart.
“But I thought—oh, my poor head—then why did you knock at the window, you wicked man?”
“Eh hey!” answered the miller. “You ask why I knocked. Why shouldn’t I knock when your mother owes me money? And then you come jumping out and begin to kiss me. What can I do? I know how to kiss as well as any man——”
And he stretched out his hand toward her again, but the moment he touched the girl’s body she started as if an insect had stung her.
“Get away!” she screamed, so angrily that the miller fell back a step. “I’m not a rouble bill that you can lay your hands on as if I belonged to you. If you come back again I’ll warm you up so that you’ll forget how to make love for three years.”
The miller was taken aback.
“What a little firebrand it is! Do you think I’m a Jew that you howl at me so hatefully?”
“If you’re not a Jew, then what are you? You charge half a rouble for every rouble you lend, and then you come to me for interest besides! Get away, I tell you, you horrid brute!”
“Well, my girl!” said the miller, nervously covering his face with his hand as if she had really hit him with her fist. “I see it’s no use for a sensible man to talk to you. Go and send your mother to me.”
But the old woman had already come out of the hut, and was making a low curtsey to the miller. Philip enjoyed this more than he had the words of the girl. He stuck his arms akimbo, and the head of his black shadow rubbed so hard against the wall that he wondered his hat didn’t come off.
“Do you know what I’ve come for, old woman?” he asked.
“Oh, how should I not know, poor wretch that I am! You have come for my money.”
“Ha, ha, notyourmoney, old woman!” the miller laughed. “I’m not a robber; I don’t come at night and take money that isn’t mine.”
“Yes, youhavecome for money that isn’t yours!” retorted Galya, angrily falling upon the miller. “Youhavecome for it!”
“Crazy girl!” exclaimed the miller, stepping back. “Upon my word there isn’t another girl in the whole village as crazy as you are. And not in the village alone, in the whole District. Just think a minute what you have said! If it weren’t for your mother, who probably wouldn’t testify against you, I’d have you up in court before Christmas for cheating me. Come, think a little what you’re doing, girl!”
“Why need I think when I’m doing right?”
“How can it be right for the old woman to borrow money from me and not pay?”
“You lie! You lie like a dog! You came courting me when you were still a workman at the mill; youcame to our khata and never said a word about wanting anything in return. And then, when your uncle died and you came to be a miller yourself, you collected the whole debt, and now even that won’t satisfy you!”
“And the flour?”
“Well, what about the flour? How much do you ask for it?”
“Sixty copecks a pood, not less! No one would let you have it cheaper than that, no, not if you threw your precious self in with it into the bargain.”
“And how much have you already collected from us?”
“Tut, tut, how she does talk! You’ve a tongue in your head as bad as Kharko’s, girl. I’ll answer that by asking you for the interest. Have you paid it?”
But Galya was silent. It is often that way with girls. They talk and talk and rattle along like a mill with all its stones grinding, and then they suddenly stop dead. You’d think they had run short of water. That’s how Galya did. She burst into a flood of bitter tears, and went away wiping her eyes on the wide sleeve of her blouse.
“There now!” said the miller, a little confused but satisfied in his heart. “That’s what comes of attacking people. If you hadn’t begun shouting at me there wouldn’t have been anything to cry for.”
“Hold your tongue! Hold your tongue, you foul creature!”
“Hold your own tongue, if that’s what you think!”
“Be quiet, be quiet, my honey!” the mother joined in, heaving a deep sigh. The old woman was evidently afraid of irritating the miller; it was clear she could not pay him now that her time was up.
“I won’t be quiet, mother, I won’t, I won’t!” answered the girl, as if all the wheels in her mill had begun turning again. “I won’t be quiet; and if you want to know, I’m going to scratch out his eyes so that he won’t dare to get me gossiped about for nothing, and come knocking at my window and kissing me! Tell me what you meant by knocking, or I’ll catch you by the top-knot without stopping to ask if you are a miller and a rich man or not. You never used to be proud like that; you came courting me yourself and pouring out tender words. But now you hold your nose so high that your hat won’t stay on your head!”
“Oi, honey, honey, do be quiet, my poor dear little orphan!” begged the old woman with another grievous sigh. “And you, Mr. Miller, don’t think ill of the poor silly girl. Young hearts and young wisdom are mates; they are like new beer in a ferment. They boil and foam, but if you will let them stand awhile they will grow sweet to a man’s taste.”
“What do I care?” answered the miller. “I don’t ask for either bitter or sweet from her, because you are not my equals, either of you. Give me themoney, old woman, and I’ll never come near your khata again.”
“Okh, but we have no money! Wait a little; we will work for some, my daughter and I, and then we will pay you. Oh, misery me, Philipko, dearie, what a time I do have with you and with her! You know yourself I have loved you like a son; I never thought, I never guessed, you would cast my debts in my teeth and with the interest, too! Oh, if I could only get my daughter married! A good husband would be easy to find, but she won’t have any one. Ever since you have come courting the girl you seem to have cast a spell over her. ‘I’d rather be buried in the cold ground than marry any one else,’ she says. I was foolish ever to let you stay here until dawn. Oi, misery me!”
“But what can I do?” asked the miller. “You don’t understand these things, old woman. A rich man has many calls on his money. I pay the Jew what I owe him; now you must pay me.”
“Wait just one month!”
The miller rubbed his head and reflected. He felt a little sorry for the old woman, and Galya’s embroidered blouse was gleaming in the distance.
“Very well, then, only I’ll have to add thirty copecks to the debt for interest. You’d better pay at once.”
“What can I do? It’s my fate not to pay, I can see that.”
“All right, I’ll leave it at that. I’m not a Jew. I’m a decent sort of a fellow. Any one else would have charged you forty copecks at least, I know that for certain, and I’m only asking you twenty, and shall wait till St. Philip’s day for the money. But then you will have to look out. If you don’t pay, I’ll complain about you to the police.”
With these words he turned, bowed, and walked away across the pasture, without so much as a glance at the hut at whose door there shone for a long time a white embroidered blouse. It shone against the dark shade of the cherry trees like a little white star, and the miller could not see the black eyes weeping, the white arms stretched out toward him, the young breast sighing for his sake.
“Don’t cry, my honey; don’t cry, my sugar-plum!” the old woman soothed her child. “Don’t cry, it’s God’s will, my darling.”
“Okh, mother, mother, if only you had let me scratch out his eyes, perhaps I should feel better!”
After that adventure the miller’s thoughts became gloomier than ever.
“Somehow nothing ever goes right in this world,” he said to himself. “Unpleasant things are always happening, a man never knows why. For instance,that girl there drove me away. She called me a Jew. If I were a Jew and had as much money as I have and a business like mine, would I live as I do? Of course not! Look what my life is! I work in the mill myself; I don’t half sleep by night; I don’t half eat by day; I keep my eye on the water to see it doesn’t run out; I keep my eye on the stones to see they don’t come loose; I keep my eye on the shafts and the pinions and the cogs to see they run smoothly and don’t miss a stroke. Yes, and I keep my eye on that infernal workman of mine. How can one depend on a servant? If I turn my back for an instant the scoundrel runs off after the girls. Yes, a miller’s life is a dog’s life, it is! Of course, though, ever since my uncle—God rest his soul—fell into the mill-pond drunk, and the mill came to me, the money has been collecting in my pockets. But what’s the result? Don’t I have to tramp for hours after every single rouble I make, and get abused for it to my face, yes, to my very face? And how much do I get in the end? A trifle! A Christian never does get as much as a Jew. Now if only the devil would carry away that Jew Yankel I might be able to manage. The people wouldn’t go to any one but me then, whether they wanted flour or money for taxes. Oho! In that case I might even open a little inn, and then I could either get some one to run the mill for me, or else sell it. Bother the mill, say I! Somehow a man isn’t a man as long as hehas to work. The fact is, one copeck begets another. Only fools don’t know that. If you buy yourself a pair of pigs, for instance—pigs are prolific animals—in a year you’ll have a herd of them, and money’s just the same. If you put it out to pasture among stupid folk you can sit still and yawn until the time comes to drive it home. Every copeck will have brought forth ten copecks, every rouble will have brought forth ten roubles.”
The miller had now reached the crest of a hill from where the road sloped gently to the river. From here, when the night breeze breathed into his face, he could faintly hear the sleepy water murmuring in the mill-race. Looking behind him, the miller could see the village sleeping among its gardens, and the widow’s little khata under its tall poplars. He stood plunged in thought for a few moments, scratching the back of his head.
“Ah, what a fool I am!” he said at last, resuming his journey. “If my uncle hadn’t taken it into his head to get drunk on gorelka and walk into the mill-pond I might have been married to Galya to-day, but now she’s beneath me. Okh, but that girl is sweet to kiss! Goodness, how sweet she is! That’s why I say that nothing ever goes right in this world. If that little face had a nice dowry behind it, if it had even as much as old Makogon is giving away with his Motria, there would be nothing more to be said!”
He cast one last look behind him, and turned on his way, when suddenly the stroke of a bell resounded from the village. Something seemed to have fallen from the church steeple that rose from a hill in the centre of the town, and to be flying, clanging and rocking, across the fields.
“Eh, hey, it is midnight on earth,” the miller mused, and with a great yawn he turned and walked rapidly down the hill, thinking of his flock as he went. He saw his roubles as if they had been alive, passing from hand to hand and from business to business, grazing and multiplying. He laughed to recall that some fools thought they worked for themselves. And when the time was ripe, he, the owner of the flock, would drive it and its increase back into his iron chest.
These thoughts were all pleasant ones, but the recollection of the Jew spoilt them again. The miller was provoked because that son of Israel had seized all the grazing for himself, leaving his poor roubles nowhere to feed and nothing to grow fat on, like a flock of sheep in a field where Jewish goats had already been pasturing. Every one knew they never could fatten there!
“Oh, I wish the devil would get him, the foul brute!” the miller said to himself, and he decided it was the thought of the Jew that depressed him so. That’s what was wrong with the world. Thoseinfernal Jews prevented Christians from collecting their lawful profits.
Half way down the hill, where the peaceful, drowsy sound of the water in the mill-race came unintermittently to his ears, the miller suddenly stopped and struck his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Ha! What a joke it would be! It would be a grand joke, I swear! This the Day of Atonement. What if the Hebrew devil should take a fancy to our inn-keeper Yankel? But he won’t! It couldn’t possibly happen. The town is crammed with Jews, and Yankel is a tipsy old wretch, as bony as a hedgehog. Who would want him? No,” thought the miller, “I’m not lucky enough for Khapun to choose our Yankel out of thousands of others.”
Then, like a nest of ants in a turmoil, another train of thought began to pass through his head.
“Ah, Philip, Philip!” he said to himself. “It isn’t right for a Christian to think such things! Recollect yourself! Yankel would leave children behind him, as well as debts. And another reason why it is sinful: Yankel has never done you any harm. If others have reason to blame the old inn-keeper, you yourself are not guiltless of usury.”
But the miller hastily sent other and angrier thoughts to attack these last unpleasant reflections that had begun to bite his conscience like vicious dogs.
“But after all, a Sheeny is only a Sheeny, and isn’tin the same class with Christians at all. Even if I do lend money—and I do, there’s no use denying it—it’s better for Christians to pay interest to a brother Christian than to a heathen Jew.”
At that moment the last notes of the bell pealed out from the belfry.
Probably Ivan Kadilo, the bell-ringer, had gone to sleep in the church and had pulled the bell rope in his sleep, so long had he taken to sound the hour of midnight. To atone for his neglect, this last tug was so violent that the miller actually jumped as the sound came rolling over the hill, over his head, across the river, across the wood, and away over the distant fields through which wound the road to the city.
“Every one is asleep now,” the miller thought, and something gripped his heart. “Every one is asleep where he wants to be; all but the Jews crowded weeping into their churches, and I, who am standing here by my mill-pond like a lost soul, thinking wicked thoughts.”
And everything seemed very strange to him.
“I hear the sound of the bell dying away over the fields,” thought he, “and I feel as if something invisible were running, moaning, through the country. I see the woods beyond the river drenched with dew and shining in the moonlight, and I begin to wonder why they should be covered with frost on a summer’s night. And when I remember that my unclewas drowned in that pond, and how glad I was that it happened, I seem to lose heart entirely. I don’t know whether to go down to the mill or to stay where I am.”
“Gavrilo! Hey, Gavrilo!” he shouted at last. “There now! The mill is empty, and that scamp has made off to the village again after the girls.”
Philip stepped out into a bright spot of moonlight on the dam, and stood listening to the water trickling through the sluices. It seemed to him to be stealing out of the pond and creeping toward the mill-wheels.
“I had better go to bed,” he thought. “But I’ll see that everything is all right first.”
The moon had long since climbed to the zenith, and was looking down into the water. The miller wondered that the little river should be deep enough to hold the moon, and the dark blue sky with all its stars, and the little black cloudlet that was flying along all alone like a bit of down from the direction of the city.
But as his eyes were already half blind with sleep he did not wonder long. Having opened the outer door of the mill and bolted it again from the inside so that he should hear his reprobate workman when he came home, he lay down to sleep.
“Hallo, get up, Philip!” he suddenly thought to himself, and he jumped out of bed in the darkness as if some one had hit him with an axe. “I forgot thatthat little cloud was the same one the Jew’s servant and I saw flying toward the city, and wondered as we watched it how it could move without wind. There isn’t much wind now, and what there is isn’t coming from that quarter. Wait a minute, Philip, there’s something queer about this!”
The miller was very sleepy, but, nevertheless, he went out barefoot on to the dam, and stood in the middle of it scratching his chest and back (the mill was not free from fleas). A light breeze was blowing from the mill-pond behind him, and yet there was that little cloud flying directly in his face. Only it now no longer looked feathery-light, neither did it fly as swiftly and freely as before. It seemed to be swaying a little and falling to earth like a wounded bird. As it flew across the moon the miller at last saw very clearly what it was, for against that bright orb were silhouetted a pair of dark, flapping wings, and below them was hanging a human form with a long, quivering beard.
“Aha, here’s a pretty to do!” thought the miller. “He’s carrying one of them away. What shall I do? If I shout to him: drop it, it is mine! the poor Jew may break his neck or fall into the pond. He’s pretty high up.”
But he soon saw that the situation was changing. The devil was circling over the mill with his burden, and beginning to sink to the ground.
“He was greedy and chose a morsel too big forhim,” the miller said to himself. “Now I can rescue the Jew; he’s a living soul, after all, and isn’t to be compared to a devil. Come then, God bless me, let me shout my loudest!”
But instead of shouting he strangely enough ran away from the dam as fast as his legs could carry him, and hid under the sycamores that stood like nixies at the edge of the mill-pond, bathing their green branches in its dark water. The darkness was as deep under them as in a barrel, and the miller felt sure that no one could see him. To tell the honest truth, his teeth were chattering madly and his hands and feet were trembling as the shafts trembled when his mill was running. Nevertheless, he couldn’t resist the temptation of peeping out to see what would happen next.
First the devil fell almost to earth with his prey, and then rose again above the tree-tops, but it was plain to see that his load was too heavy for him. Twice he actually touched the water, so that the ripples spread in circles from the Jew’s feet, but each time he flapped his wings, and rose again with his prey as a sea-gull rises from the water with a heavy fish. At last, after circling about two or three times, the devil fell heavily on to the dam, and lay as if dead, with the fainting Jew inanimate at his side.
And I must tell you—I had nearly forgotten it—that our friend the miller had long ago seen whom the Jewish Khapun had brought from the city. Andwhen he recognised him—need I conceal it when he has confessed it himself?—he grew merry at heart and thought:
“Thank God, it is no other than our inn-keeper from Novokamensk! What happens next is none of my business, because I don’t think I ought to interfere in other people’s affairs. When two dogs are fighting there’s no reason a third should jump in. Again I say, let sleeping dogs lie. What if I hadn’t have happened to be here? I’m not the Jew’s guardian.”
And he also thought:
“Aha, Philipko, now your time has come in Novokamensk!”
Both the unfortunate Jew and the devil lay motionless on the dam for a long time. The moon had begun to redden, and was hanging above the tree-tops as if only waiting to see what the end would be before setting. A hoarse cock crowed in the village, and a dog yelped twice. But no other cocks or dogs answered these two; it evidently still lacked some hours to dawn.
The miller was exhausted, and was already beginning to think it had all been a dream, especially as the dam now lay wrapped in profoundest darkness, so that it was impossible to distinguish what theblack object lying upon it was. But when the solitary cock-crow resounded from the village the dark mass stirred. Yankel raised his head in its skull-cap, looked about him, got up, and began to steal softly away, stepping high like a stork with his thin legs, in his stocking-feet.
“Hi, there! Stop him; he’s making off!” the startled miller came near shouting, but next moment he saw the devil catch Yankel by his long coat-tails.
“Wait a bit!” Khapun cried. “There’s plenty of time yet. What a hurry you’re in! Here you are wanting to be off again before I’ve had time to rest! It’s all right for you, but what about me, who have to drag a big fellow like you along? I’m nearly dead!”
“Very well, then,” said the Jew, trying to free his coat-tails from the devil’s grasp. “Rest a little longer, and I’ll walk to my inn on foot.”
The devil jumped up in surprise.
“What’s that you’re saying?” he cried. “Do you think I have hired myself out to you as a cart to take you home from church, you hound? You must be joking!”
“Why should I be joking?” asked the wily Yankel, pretending to have no idea what the Devil wanted with him. “I am very grateful indeed to you for having brought me so far, and I can now go onquite well by myself. It is only a short way. I wouldn’t think of troubling you any more.”
The devil quivered with rage. He ran round and round on the same spot like a chicken with its head off, and knocked Yankel down with his wing. He was panting like a blacksmith’s bellows.
“Well, I never!” the miller thought. “I don’t care if it is sin to admire a devil, I do admire this one; he would never let his lawful property slip between his fingers, one can see that!”
Yankel sat up and began to yell with all his might. Even the devil could do nothing to stop him. Every one knows that as long as a Jew has a breath in his body nothing will make him hold his tongue.
“What does it matter, though?” thought the miller, looking round at his empty mill. “My man is either amusing himself with the girls or else lying drunk under a hedge.”
A sleepy frog in the mud answered Yankel’s pitiful screams with a croak, and a bittern, that foul bird of the night, boomed twice as if from an empty barrel: boo-oo, boo-oo! The moon had finally sunk behind the wood, assured that the Jew was dead and done for; darkness had fallen upon the mill, the dam, and the river, and a white mist had gathered over the pond.
The devil carelessly shook his wings, and lay down again, saying with a laugh:
“Scream as loud as you like! The mill is deserted.”
“How do you know it’s deserted?” snapped the Jew, and he began to scream for the miller.
“Mr. Miller! Oi, Mr. Miller! Golden, silver, diamond Mr. Miller! Please, please come here for one little tiny second and say three words, three little tiny words! I’ll make you a present of half the debt you owe me if you’ll only come!”
“You’ll make me a present of the whole debt!” said a voice in the miller’s heart.
The Jew stopped screaming, his head sank forward on his breast, and he burst into a fit of bitter weeping.
Again some time passed. The moon had now set, and its last rays had died out of the sky. Everything in heaven and on earth seemed wrapped in the deepest slumber; not a sound could be heard except the Jew’s low weeping and his exclamations of:
“Oh, my Sarah! Oh, my poor children! My poor little children!”
The devil felt a little rested, and sat up. Although it was dark, the miller could distinctly see a pair of horns like a young calf’s outlined against the white mist that hung over the pond.
“He looks just like ours!” thought the miller, feeling as if he had swallowed something exceedingly cold.
Then he saw the Jew nudge the devil with his elbow.
“What are you nudging me for?” asked Khapun.
“Sh, I want to tell you something.”
“What?”
“Won’t you please tell me why it is your custom always to carry off a poor Jew? Why don’t you catch a daintier morsel? For instance, there is an excellent miller living right here.”
The devil sighed deeply. Perhaps he was tired of sitting there on the edge of the pond by the empty mill; anyhow, he entered into conversation with the Jew. He raised his skull-cap—you must know that he wore a skull-cap with long ringlets hanging from underneath it, just as the servant had described him—and scratched his crown with a rasping noise like the most savage of cats clawing a board when a mouse has escaped it. Then he said:
“Alas, Yankel, you don’t know our business! I couldn’t possibly approach him.”
“And why, may I ask, would you have to take the time to approach him? I know for myself that you snatched me away before I could even yell.”
The devil laughed so merrily that he actually frightened a night-bird out of the reeds, and said:
“That’s a fact! You were easy to catch. And do you know why?”
“Why-y?”
“Because you’re a good lusty catcher yourself.I assure you there’s no other race on earth as sinful as you Jews.”
“Oi, vei, that is most surprising! And what are our sins?”
“Listen and I shall tell you.”
The devil turned to the Jew and began counting on his fingers.
“Number one. You are usurers.”
“One,” repeated Yankel, also counting on his fingers.
“Number two. You live by the blood and sweat of the people.”
“Two.”
“Number three. You sell the people vodka.”
“Three.”
“Number four. You dilute it with water.”
“Oh, let number four go! And what is the next?”
“Are four sins so few? Ah, Yankel, Yankel!”
“Oh, I don’t say four are few, I only say that you don’t know your own business. Do you think the miller isn’t a usurer, do you think the miller doesn’t live by the sweat and blood of the people?”
“Come, now, don’t pick at the miller! He’s not that kind of a man—he’s a Christian. A Christian is supposed to have pity not only on his own people but on others, too, even on Jews like you. That’s why it’s so hard for me to catch a Christian.”
“Oi, vei, what a mistake you make there!” cried the Jew gaily. “Here, let me tell you something——”
He jumped up, and the devil rose too; they stood facing one another. The Jew whispered something in the devil’s ear, motioning toward some object behind him under the sycamore tree. He pointed it out to the devil with his crooked forefinger.
“That’s number one!”
“You’re lying; it can’t be true!” the devil answered, a little startled, peering toward the trees where Philip was hiding.
“Ha, ha, I know better! Just wait a moment.”
Once more he whispered something, and then said aloud:
“Number two! And this——” again he whispered in the devil’s ear. “Makes three, as I am an honest Jew!”
The devil shook his head and answered doubtfully:
“It can’t be true.”
“Let’s make a bet. If I am right you shall let me go free when a year is up, and repay me my losses into the bargain.”
“Ha! I agree. What a joke it would be! Then I should try my power——”
“You’re getting a fine bargain, I can tell you!”
At that moment the cock in the village crowed once more, and although his voice was so sleepy that again no other bird answered him out of the silent night, Khapun shuddered.
“Here, what am I standing here gaping at you forwhile you tell me tales? A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Come along!”
He flapped his wings, flew a few feet along the dam, and once more fell upon poor Yankel like a hawk, burying his claws in the back of his shirt, and preparing to take flight.
Alas, how piteously old Yankel screamed, stretching out his arms toward the village and his native hut, calling his wife and children by name!
“Oi, my Sarah! Oi, Shlemka, Iteley, Movshey! Oi, Mr. Miller, Mr. Miller! Please, please save me! Say the three words! I see you; there you are, standing under the sycamore tree. Have pity on a poor Jew! He has a living soul like you!”
Very, very piteous were poor Yankel’s lamentations! Icy fingers seemed to clutch the miller’s heart and squeeze it until it ached. The devil seemed to be waiting for something, his wings fluttered like the wings of a young bustard that has not learnt to fly. He hovered silently over the dam with Yankel in his talons.
“What a wretch that devil is!” thought the miller, hiding farther under the trees. “He is only tormenting the poor Jew. If the cocks should crow again——”
Hardly had that thought entered his head than the devil laughed till the wood rang, and suddenly sprang aloft into the sky. The miller peered upward, but in a few seconds the devil appeared nolarger than a sparrow. Then he glimmered for a moment like a fly, then like a gnat, and at last disappeared.
Then the miller was seized with genuine terror. His knees knocked together, his teeth chattered, his hair stood on end so high that, had he been wearing a hat, it would certainly have been knocked off his head. He never could say exactly what he did next.
Bang—bang!
Bang—bang—bang! Bang—bang!
Some one was knocking so loudly at the door of the mill that the whole building was filled with noisy echoes that reverberated in every corner. The miller thought the devil might have come back—he and the Jew had not whispered together for nothing!—so he only buried his head under the pillow.
“Bang—bang! Bang—bang! Hey, master, unlock the door!”
“I won’t!”
“And why won’t you?”
The miller raised his head.
“Ah, that sounds like Gavrilo’s voice. Gavrilo, is that you?”
“Who else should it be?”
“Swear that it’s you!”
“What?”
“Swear!”
“All right, then, I swear it’s me. How could I not be myself? And yet you want me to swear it! There’s a marvel for you!”
Even then the miller wouldn’t believe him. He went upstairs and peeped out of a window over the door, and there beneath him stood Gavrilo. The miller was much relieved and went down to open the door.
Gavrilo was actually staggered when the miller appeared in the doorway.
“Why, master, what has happened to you?”
“What’s the matter?”
“Why on earth have you smeared your face all over with flour? You’re as white as chalk!”
“Didn’t you come across the river?”
“I did.”
“And didn’t you look up?”
“Perhaps.”
“And didn’t you see some one?”
“Who?”
“Who? Fool! The creature that nabbed Yankel the inn-keeper.”
“Who the devil nabbed him?”
“Who, indeed? Why, the Jewish devil, Khapun. Don’t you know what day this has been?”
Gavrilo looked at the miller with troubled eyes and asked:
“Have you been to the village this evening?”
“Yes.”
“Did you stop at the inn?”
“Yes.”
“Did you drink any gorelka?”
“Bah, what’s the use of talking to a fool? I did have some gorelka at the priest’s, but all the same I have just seen with my own eyes the devil resting on the dam with the Jew in his claws.”
“Where?”
“Right there, in the middle of the dam.”
“And what happened next?”
“Well, and then——” the miller whistled and waved his hand in the air.
Gavrilo stared at the dam, scratched his top-knot, and looked up at the sky.
“There’s a marvel for you! What’ll we do now? How can we get along without the Jew?”
“Why are you so anxious to have a Jew here, hey?”
“It isn’t only me. One can’t—oh, don’t argue about it, master, things wouldn’t be the same without a Jew; one couldn’t get along without one.”
“Tut, tut! What a fool you are!”
“What are you scolding me for? I don’t say I’m clever, but I know millet from buckwheat. I work in the mill, but I drink vodka at the tavern. Tell me, as you’re so clever, who will be our inn-keeper now?”
“Who?”
“Yes, who?”
“Perhaps I will.”
“You?”
Gavrilo stared at the miller with his eyes starting out of his head. Then he shook his head, clicked his tongue, and said:
“So, that’s your idea!”
The miller now noticed for the first time that Gavrilo was very uncertain on his legs and that the lads had given him another black eye. To tell the truth, the fellow looked so ugly and pale that you wanted to spit at the sight of him. He was a great hand with the girls, and the lads had more than once fallen upon him. Whenever they caught him they were sure to beat him almost to death. Of course it was no wonder they beat him; the wonder was there was ever anything for which to do it!
“There is no face in the world so ugly but some girl will fall in love with it,” thought the miller. “But they love him by threes and fours and dozens. Ugh! You scarecrow!”
“Come, Gavrilo, boy,” he nevertheless said in a coaxing voice, “come and sleep with me. When a man has seen what I have he feels a bit nervous.”
“All right, it’s all the same to me.”
A minute later a certain workman was whistling through his nose. And let me tell you, I spent the night at the mill once myself, and I have never heard any one whistle through his nose as Gavrilo did. If a man didn’t like it he had better not spend the nightin the same house with him or he wouldn’t sleep a wink.
“Gavrilo!” said the miller. “Hey, Gavrilo!”
“Well, then, what is it? If I couldn’t sleep myself at least I wouldn’t keep others awake!”
“Did they beat you again?”
“What if they did?”
“Where have you been?”
“You want to know everything, don’t you? In Konda.”
“In Konda? Why did you go there?”
“Because! What else do you want to know? Hee, hee, hee!”
“Aren’t there girls enough for you in Novokamensk?”
“Bah! It makes me sick to look at them. There isn’t one there that suits me.”
“What about Galya, the widow’s daughter?”
“Galya? What do I care about Galya?”
“What, have you been courting her?”
“Of course I have; what do you think?”
The miller flounced over in bed.
“You’re lying, you hound; a plague seize your mother!”
“I’m not lying and I never lie. I leave that to cleverer men than I am.”
Gavrilo yawned and said in a sleepy voice:
“Do you remember, master, how my right eyewas so swelled up for a week that you couldn’t even see it?”
“Well?”
“That devil’s child entertained me by doing that. Confound her, say I! Galya, indeed!”
“So that’s how things are, is it?” thought the miller. “Gavrilo! Hey, Gavrilo! Oh, the hound, he’s snoring again—Gavrilo!”
“Whatdoyou want? Have you gone crazy?”
“Do you want to get married?”
“I haven’t made my boots yet. When I’ve made my boots I’ll think about it.”
“But I’d give you boots, and tar for them, and a hat and a belt.”
“Would you? And I’ll tell you something better still.”
“What?”
“That the cocks are already crowing in the village. Can’t you hear them going it?”
It was true. In the village, perhaps at Galya’s cottage, a shrill-voiced cock was splitting his throat shouting “cock-a-doodle-doo!”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” answered other voices from far and near like water boiling in a kettle, and all the cracks in the wall of the little room began to gleam white, even down to the tiniest chink.
The miller yawned blissfully.
“Ah, now they are far away!” he thought. “How funny it was! He flew all the way from the city to mymill while the clock was striking twelve. Ha, ha, and so Yankel has gone! What a joke! Why, if I should tell it to any one, they’d call me a liar. But why should I lie? They’ll find it out for themselves to-morrow. Perhaps I’d better not mention it at all. They would say I ought to have—but what’s the use of arguing about it? If I had killed the Jew myself, or anything like that, I should have been responsible for what happened, but as it is, it doesn’t concern me at all. What need had I to interfere? Let sleeping dogs lie, say I. A shut mouth plays safe. They won’t hear anything from me.”
So Philip the miller reasoned with himself, and tried to ease his conscience a little. It was only as he was on the verge of falling asleep that a thought crept out of some recess of his brain like a toad out of a hole, and that thought was:
“Now, Philip, now’s your time!”
This thought chased all the others out of his mind and took possession of it.
With it he went to sleep.