The night drew near, the air became fresher, the sounds became more subdued. The wooden houses seemed to swell and grow taller, clothing themselves with shadows. The children were dragged away from the yard to bed. Some of them were already asleep by the fence or at the feet or on the knees of their mothers. Most of the children grew quieter and more docile with the night. Evsyenko disappeared unnoticed; he seemed to have melted away. The mat-maker's widow was also missing. The bass notes of the harmonica could be heard somewhere in the distance, beyond the cemetery. Ludmilla's mother sat on a bench doubled up, with her back stuck out like a cat. My grandmother had gone out to take tea with a neighbor, a midwife, a great fat woman with a nose like a duck's, and a gold medal "for saving lives" on her flat, masculine-looking chest. The whole street feared her, regarding her as a witch, and it was related of her that she had carried out of the flames, when a fire broke out, the three children and sick wife of a certain colonel. There was a friendship between grandmother and her. When they met in the street they used to smile at each other from a long way off, as if they had seen something specially pleasant. Kostrom, Ludmilla, and I sat on the bench at the gate. Tchurka had called upon Ludmilla's brother to wrestle with him. Locked in each other's arms they trampled down the sand and became angry. "Leave off!" cried Ludmilla, timorously. Looking at her sidewise out of his black eyes, Kostrom told a story about the hunter Kalinin, a grayhaired old man with cunning eyes, a man of evil fame, known to all the village. He had not long been dead, but they had not buried him in the earth in the graveyard, but had placed his coffin above ground, away from the other graves. The coffin was black, on tall trestles; on the lid were drawn in white paint a cross, a spear, a reed, and two bones. Every night, as soon as it grew dark, the old man rose from his coffin and walked about the cemetery, looking for something, till the first cock crowed. "Don't talk about such dreadful things!" begged Ludmilla. "Nonsense!" cried Tchurka, breaking away from her brother. "What are you telling lies for? I saw them bury the coffin myself, and the one above ground is simply a monument. As to a dead man walking about, the drunken blacksmith set the idea afloat." Kostrom, without looking at him, suggested: "Go and sleep in the cemetery; then you will see." They began to quarrel, and Ludmilla, shaking her head sadly, asked: "Mamochka, do dead people walk about at night?" "They do," answered her mother, as if the question had called her back from a distance. The son of the shopkeeper Valek, a tall, stout, red-faced youth of twenty, came to us, and, hearing what we were disputing about, said: