All the boys laughed; and again there was a silence for a while, as often happens when people are talking in the open air. I looked out into the solemn, majestic stillness of the night; the dewy freshness of late evening had been succeeded by the dry heat of midnight; the darkness still had long to lie in a soft curtain over the slumbering fields; there was still a long while left before the first whisperings, the first dewdrops of dawn. There was no moon in the heavens; it rose late at that time. Countless golden stars, twinkling in rivalry, seemed all running softly towards the Milky Way, and truly, looking at them, you were almost conscious of the whirling, never--resting motion of the earth.... A strange, harsh, painful cry, sounded twice together over the river, and a few moments later, was repeated farther down.... Kostya shuddered. 'What was that?' 'That was a heron's cry,' replied Pavel tranquilly. 'A heron,' repeated Kostya.... 'And what was it, Pavlusha, I heard yesterday evening,' he added, after a short pause; 'you perhaps will know.' 'What did you hear?' 'I will tell you what I heard. I was going from Stony Ridge to Shashkino; I went first through our walnut wood, and then passed by a little pool--you know where there's a sharp turn down to the ravine--there is a water-pit there, you know; it is quite overgrown with reeds; so I went near this pit, brothers, and suddenly from this came a sound of some one groaning, and piteously, so piteously; oo-oo, oo-oo! I was in such a fright, my brothers; it was late, and the voice was so miserable. I felt as if I should cry myself.... What could that have been, eh?' 'It was in that pit the thieves drowned Akim the forester, last summer,' observed Pavel; 'so perhaps it was his soul lamenting.' 'Oh, dear, really, brothers,' replied Kostya, opening wide his eyes, which were round enough before, 'I did not know they had drowned Akim in that pit. Shouldn't I have been frightened if I'd known!' 'But they say there are little, tiny frogs,' continued Pavel, 'who cry piteously like that.' 'Frogs? Oh, no, it was not frogs, certainly not. (A heron again uttered a cry above the river.) Ugh, there it is!' Kostya cried involuntarily; 'it is just like a wood-spirit shrieking.' 'The wood-spirit does not shriek; it is dumb,' put in Ilyusha; 'it only claps its hands and rattles.' 'And have you seen it then, the wood-spirit?' Fedya asked him ironically. 'No, I have not seen it, and God preserve me from seeing it; but others have seen it. Why, one day it misled a peasant in our parts, and led him through the woods and all in a circle in one field.... He scarcely got home till daylight.' 'Well, and did he see it?' 'Yes. He says it was a big, big creature, dark, wrapped up, just like a tree; you could not make it out well; it seemed to hide away from the moon, and kept staring and staring with its great eyes, and winking and winking with them....'