hunchbacked Foka — bare-footed, clad in some sort of a woman’s wadded nightdress, and carrying a candlestick — opened the door to us. As soon as he saw who we were, he trembled all over with joy, kissed us on the shoulders, hurriedly put on his felt slippers, and started to dress himself properly. I passed in a semi-waking condition through the porch and up the steps, but in the hall the lock of the door, the bars and bolts, the crooked boards of the flooring, the chest, the ancient candelabrum (splashed all over with grease as of old), the shadows thrown by the crooked, chill, recently-lighted stump of candle, the perennially dusty, unopened window behind which I remembered sorrel to have grown — all was so familiar, so full of memories, so intimate of aspect, so, as it were, knit together by a single idea, that I suddenly