"That is certainly a woman," murmured the headsman's wife to Ivan, staring suspiciously at the stranger from beneath her thick contracted bushy eyebrows. Then approaching him and looking him full in the face she said: "My Dovey! It seems to me that you are in no good way. Whom do you seek?"
"The master," replied the stranger curtly, resting his elbows on the hearth.
"Possibly you may suppose this house to be an inn because it lies at the extreme end of the town?"
"I think nothing of the sort, my pretty mistress. I know that here dwells Master Zudár, the worthy ferry-master."
"Yes, ferry-master! Does he not transport men from this world to the next?"
"I have never seen him, yet I know him well for all that. It is not possible to speak to him now because he is a-praying. He prays regularly for a whole hour at a time, and then it is not well then to disturb him. That is why you two are crouching in the kitchen here. You, my pretty mistress, are Master Zudár's wife, and this young man is his 'prentice. I know you very well also."
"But who are you yourself then? Speak! What do you want?" asked the woman much puzzled.
"I shall tell that to the master himself, inside there, when he has quite finished his devotions. It is his habit every night, before he lies down, to fire off his gun, then I will approach him. Meanwhile sit down beside me! Look ye, this bench can very well hold the pair of us, let us have a little talk together."
The stranger thereupon doffed his little round furred cap and his long black trussed-up locks fell in curling ringlets about his shoulders.
"'Tis a woman, a woman indeed!" whispered Ivan and the dame of the house to each other.
The latter now approached the enigmatical shape a little more boldly, and sitting down beside him, opened a conversation with him.
"What, pray, is your business with my husband?"
"Come, come, my dear creature! You have no right to put such questions to me. You ought rather to ask me whether I am hungry and would like some supper. You would not have to ask me that twice I can assure you."
The woman, at this hint, arose sullenly and took from a wainscot cupboard a plate of hearth cakes which she set before the stranger.
"I suppose, sir, you don't mind eating off the headsman's platter?" said she.