While our friend was sitting in his uncomfortable arm-chair busied with his thoughts, the tallow candle burned on before him, its light long since obscured by its long black wick and threatening to go out every instant; while through the window, the dull, dark night peeped in at him on the point of turning blue with the approaching dawn; for the cocks already crowed afar. At this very hour, too, in another quarter of the town, an incident was taking place which was destined to increase the unpleasantness of our hero’s position.

Along the distant streets and alleys there rattled a very singular equipage, which aroused doubt within one’s mind as to its proper nomenclature. It did not resemble a tarantas, nor a calash, nor a britchka: it was more like a swollen, fat-cheeked watermelon set upon wheels. The sides of the watermelon—that is to say, the doors, which bore traces of yellow paint—closed very badly, on account of the dilapidated condition of the handles and locks; so they were secured with strings. The watermelon was filled with chintz pillows, sacks of grain, kalatchi,¹ kokurki, skorodumki, and cracknels of raised dough. A chicken- pie and a pasty filled with pickled cucumbers even peeped out on the top; while the foot-board was occupied by an individual of the lackey species, clad in a short round jacket of variegated home-made stuff, and an unkempt pepper and salt beard, an individual of the sort known by the appellation of malui.²

The rattle and squeak of the iron clamps and the rusty screws as the vehicle passed along, awakened a watchman quite at the other end of the town, and this fellow, raising his halberd, shouted at the top of his voice through his sleep, “Who goes there?” but perceiving at last that no one was going past him, and that there was only a rattling in the distance, he shook himself by his collar, made of some sort of wild beast’s skin, and, stepping up to his lantern, he chastised it thoroughly. Then, quitting his halberd once more, he went to sleep again, according to the laws of his order of chivalry. Meanwhile the horses of the watermelon coach had fallen down more than once, for they were not shod; and, besides it was evident that the ancient pavement of the town was not familiar to them. The koluimaga,³ after making several turns from street to street, finally drove into an obscure lane leading past the little parish church of St. Nikolai, and halted before the gate of the protopope’s house. From the vehicle then descended a maidservant wearing a kerchief and a tyelogryeka.⁴ She knocked at the gate with both fists as vigorously as though she had been a man. Then the dogs began to bark; and finally the gates, opening, ingulfed, although with great difficulty, this clumsy travelling conveyance. The equipage entered a small courtyard, which was full of wood, chicken-coops, and cages; from the equipage then emerged a lady, who was none other than our friend the widow of the collegiate secretary Korobotchok. Shortly after our hero’s departure, she had become so uneasy with regard to any possible trickery on his part, that, after losing her sleep for three nights in succession, she had made up her mind to go to town herself, and this despite the fact that her horses were not shod. She meant to find out definitely what dead souls were good for, and whether she had not committed a blunder, which God forbid, in selling them, perchance, too cheaply. The eventual result of her arrival in town will be learnt by the reader from a conversation which took place soon afterwards between two ladies. We will give this conversation in the next chapter.