“Come, come, grandson, come!” the coachman said kindly. “It’s all right, don’t be frightened....I am frightened myself.... Say your prayers!” The door creaked and the porter’s head appeared. “Aren’t you asleep, Stepan?” he asked. “I shan’t get any sleep all night,” he said, coming in. “I shall be opening and shutting the gates all night.... What are you crying for, Alyoshka?” “He is frightened,” the coachman answered for his grandson. Again there was the sound of a wailing voice in the air. The porter said: “They are crying. The mother can’t believe her eyes.... It’s dreadful how upset she is.” “And is the father there?” “Yes.... The father is all right. He sits in the corner and says nothing. They have taken the children to relations.... Well, Stepan, shall we have a game of trumps?” “Yes,” the coachman agreed, scratching himself, “and you, Alyoshka, go to sleep. Almost big enough to be married, and blubbering, you rascal. Come, go along, grandson, go along....” The presence of the porter reassured Alyoshka. He went, not very resolutely, towards the sledge and lay down. And while he was falling asleep he heard a half-whisper. “I beat and cover,” said his grandfather. “I beat and cover,” repeated the porter. The bell rang in the yard, the door creaked and seemed also saying: “I beat and cover.” When Alyoshka dreamed of the gentleman and, frightened by his eyes, jumped up and burst out crying, it was morning, his grandfather was snoring, and the coach-house no longer seemed terrible. PANIC FEARS DURING all the years I have been living in this world I have only three times been terrified. The first real terror, which made my hair stand on end and made shivers run all over me, was caused by a trivial but strange phenomenon. It happened that, having nothing to do one July evening, I drove to the station for the newspapers. It was a still, warm, almost sultry evening, like all those monotonous evenings in July which, when once they have set in, go on for a week, a fortnight, or sometimes longer, in regular unbroken succession, and are suddenly cut short by a violent thunderstorm and a lavish downpour of rain that refreshes everything for a long time. The sun had set some time before, and an unbroken gray dusk lay all over the land. The mawkishly sweet scents of the grass and flowers were heavy in the motionless, stagnant air. I was driving in a rough trolley. Behind my back the gardener’s son Pashka, a boy of eight years old, whom I had taken with me to look after the horse in case of necessity, was gently snoring, with his head on a sack of oats. Our way lay along a narrow by-road, straight as a ruler, which lay hid like a great snake in the tall thick rye. There was a pale light from the afterglow of sunset; a streak of light cut its way through a narrow, uncouth-looking cloud, which seemed sometimes like a boat and sometimes like a man wrapped in a quilt....