“How did you get here?” he asks.

“I have lost my way, good man.  I was walking to the Mitrievsky Mill and I lost my way.”

“Whew!  Is this the road to Mitrievsky Mill?  You sheepshead!  For the Mitrievsky Mill you must keep much more to the left, straight out of the town along the high road.  You have been drinking and have gone a couple of miles out of your way.  You must have had a drop in the town.”

“I did, friend . . .  Truly I did; I won’t hide my sins.  But how am I to go now?”

“Go straight on and on along this avenue till you can go no farther, and then turn at once to the left and go till you have crossed the whole graveyard right to the gate.  There will be a gate there. . . .  Open it and go with God’s blessing.  Mind you don’t fall into the ditch.  And when you are out of the graveyard you go all the way by the fields till you come out on the main road.”

“God give you health, friend.  May the Queen of Heaven save you and have mercy on you.  You might take me along, good man!  Be merciful!  Lead me to the gate.”

“As though I had the time to waste!  Go by yourself!”

“Be merciful!  I’ll pray for you.  I can’t see anything; one can’t see one’s hand before one’s face, friend. . . .  It’s so dark, so dark!  Show me the way, sir!”

“As though I had the time to take you about; if I were to play the nurse to everyone I should never have done.”

“For Christ’s sake, take me!  I can’t see, and I am afraid to go alone through the graveyard.  It’s terrifying, friend, it’s terrifying; I am afraid, good man.”

“There’s no getting rid of you,” sighs the watchman.  “All right then, come along.”

The watchman and the traveller go on together.  They walk shoulder to shoulder in silence.  A damp, cutting wind blows straight into their faces and the unseen trees murmuring and rustling scatter big drops upon them. . . .  The path is almost entirely covered with puddles.

“There is one thing passes my understanding,” says the watchman after a prolonged silence—­“how you got here.  The gate’s locked.  Did you climb over the wall?  If you did climb over the wall, that’s the last thing you would expect of an old man.”

“I don’t know, friend, I don’t know.  I can’t say myself how I got here.  It’s a visitation.  A chastisement of the Lord.  Truly a visitation, the evil one confounded me.  So you are a watchman here, friend?”

“Yes.”

“The only one for the whole graveyard?”

There is such a violent gust of wind that both stop for a minute.  Waiting till the violence of the wind abates, the watchman answers: 

“There are three of us, but one is lying ill in a fever and the other’s asleep.  He and I take turns about.”

“Ah, to be sure, friend.  What a wind!  The dead must hear it!  It howls like a wild beast!  O-o-oh.”

“And where do you come from?”