The sound of the footfall persisted, and was certainly not far off.  The prints in the snow were so fresh that they seemed not quite motionless, as if the snow were only now settling after the pressure it had just suffered.  The man slackened his pace.  He did not like the sound which he heard.  He began to feel as if he by whom it was made would not prove a companion to his taste.  Yet his curiosity continued.  There began within him a struggle between his curiosity and another sensation, which was of repugnance, almost of fear.  And so equal were the combatants that the lights of the village were in sight, and he had not decreased the distance between himself and the other.  Seeing the lights, however, his curiosity got the upper hand.  He slightly quickened his pace, and almost immediately beheld the shape of a man relieved against the night, and treading onward through the snow.  And as the sound of the footsteps had been disagreeable to his nerves, so the contours of the moving blackness repelled him.  He did not like the look of this man whose footprints were the same as his own, and he decided not to join him.  But, moving rather cautiously, he gained a little upon him, in order to make sure, if possible, whether or not he was a neighbor or an acquaintance.

The figure seemed somehow familiar to our man, indeed, oddly familiar.  Nevertheless, he was unable to identify it.  As he followed it, more and more certain did he become that he had seen it, that he knew it.  And yet—­did he know it?  Had he seen it?  It was almost as if one part of him denied while the other affirmed.  He longed, yet feared, to see the face.  But the face never looked back.  And so, one at a little distance behind the other, they came into the village.

Here a strange thing occurred.

There were very few people about, but there were a few, and two or three of them, meeting the person our man was following, greeted him respectfully.  But these same people, when immediately afterward they encountered the other, who had known them for years, and whom they of course knew, showed the greatest perturbation; one, a woman, even signs of terror.  They gave him no greeting, shrank from him as he passed, and stared after him, as if bemused, when he was gone by.  Their behavior was almost incredible.  But he was so set on what was before him that he stopped to ask no questions.

The village was a long one.  Always one behind the other, walking at an even pace, the two men traversed it, approaching at last the outskirts, where, separated from the other habitations, and surrounded by a garden in which the trees were laden with snow, stood the house of the man who now watched and followed, with a growing wonder and curiosity, combined with an ever-growing repugnance, him who made the footprints, who had been saluted by the villagers, whose figure and general aspect seemed in somewise familiar to him, and yet whom he could not recognize.  Where could this person be going?  The man asked himself, and came to a resolve not to follow on into the darkness of the open country, not to proceed beyond his own home, of which now he saw the lights, but to make an effort to see the face of the other before the garden gate was reached.