mmediate front, where the masses of vapour were darkening as though
rain were probable.

Kalinin's discourse proved instructive as with his stick he from time
to time knocked the track clear of clinging tendrils.

"The locality is not without its perils," once he remarked. "For
hereabouts there lurks malaria. It does so because long ago Maliar of
Kostroma banished his evil sister, Fever, to these parts. Probably he
was paid to do so, but the exact circumstances escape my memory."

So thickly was the surface of the sea streaked with cloud-shadows that
it bore the appearance of being in mourning, of being decked in the
funeral colours of black and white. Afar off, Gudaout lay lashed with
foam, while constantly objects like snowdrifts kept gliding towards it.

"Tell me more about those devils," I said at length.

"Well, if you wish. But what exactly am I to tell you about them?"

"All that you may happen to know."

"Oh, I know EVERYTHING about them."

To this my companion added a wink. Then he continued:

"I say that I know everything about those devils for the reason that
for my mother I had a most remarkable woman, a woman cognisant of each
and every species of proverb, anathema, and item of hagiology. You must
know that, after spreading my bed beside the kitchen stove each night,
and her own bed on the top of the stove (for, after her wet-nursing of
three of the General's children, she lived a life of absolute ease, and
did no work at all)--"

Here Kalinin halted, and, driving his stick into the ground, glanced
back along the path before resuming his way with firm, lengthy strides.

"I may tell you that the General had a niece named Valentina
Ignatievna. And she too was a most remarkable woman."

"Remarkable for what?"

"Remarkable for EVERYTHING."

At this moment there came floating over our heads through the
damp-saturated air a cormorant--one of those voracious birds which so
markedly lack intelligence. And somehow the whistling of its powerful
pinions awoke in me an unpleasant reminiscent thought.

"Pray continue," I said to my fellow traveller.

"And each night, as I lay on the floor (I may mention that never did I
climb on to the stove, and to this day I dislike the heat of one), it
was her custom to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the top,
and tell me stories. And though the room would be too dark for me to
see her face, I could yet see the things of which she would be
speaking. And