g that could have happened. I rose, threw on my tunic,
girded on a dagger, and with the utmost quietness went out of the hut.
The blind boy was coming towards me. I hid by the fence, and he passed
by me with a sure but cautious step. He was carrying a parcel under
his arm. He turned towards the harbour and began to descend a steep and
narrow path.

"On that day the dumb will cry out and the blind will see," I said to
myself, following him just close enough to keep him in sight.

Meanwhile the moon was becoming overcast by clouds and a mist had risen
upon the sea. The lantern alight in the stern of a ship close at hand
was scarcely visible through the mist, and by the shore there glimmered
the foam of the waves, which every moment threatened to submerge it.
Descending with difficulty, I stole along the steep declivity, and all
at once I saw the blind boy come to a standstill and then turn down to
the right. He walked so close to the water's edge that it seemed as if
the waves would straightway seize him and carry him off. But, judging by
the confidence with which he stepped from rock to rock and avoided the
water-channels, this was evidently not the first time that he had made
that journey. Finally he stopped, as though listening for something,
squatted down upon the ground, and laid the parcel beside him.
Concealing myself behind a projecting rock on the shore, I kept watch
on his movements. After a few minutes a white figure made its appearance
from the opposite direction. It came up to the blind boy and sat down
beside him. At times the wind wafted their conversation to me.

"Well?" said a woman's voice. "The storm is violent; Yanko will not be
here."

"Yanko is not afraid of the storm!" the other replied.

"The mist is thickening," rejoined the woman's voice, sadness in its
tone.

"In the mist it is all the easier to slip past the guardships," was the
answer.

"And if he is drowned?"

"Well, what then? On Sunday you won't have a new ribbon to go to church
in."

An interval of silence followed. One thing, however, struck me--in
talking to me the blind boy spoke in the Little Russian dialect, but now
he was expressing himself in pure Russian.

"You see, I am right!" the blind boy went on, clapping his hands. "Yanko
is not afraid of sea, nor winds, nor mist, nor coastguards! Just listen!
That is not the water plashing, you can't deceive me--it is his long
oars."

The woman sprang up and began anxiously to