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He fancied he heard someone breathing heavily over his head, as though Uncle Klavdy had stepped out of his frame and was bending over his nephew. . . . Vaxin felt unbearably frightened. He clenched his teeth and held his breath in terror. At last, when a cockchafer flew in at the open window and began buzzing over his bed, he could bear it no longer and gave a violent tug at the bellrope.
"And what if the ghost of Uncle Klavdy should appear this minute?" flashed through Vaxin's mind. "But, of course, that's impossible." Ghosts are, we all know, a superstition, the offspring of undeveloped intelligence, but Vaxin, nevertheless, pulled the bed-clothes over his head, and shut his eyes very tight.
"It's not the dead but the unknown that's so horrible." It struck one o'clock. Vaxin turned over on the other side and peeped out from beneath the bedclothes at the blue light of the lamp burning before the holy ikon. The flame flickered and cast a faint light on the ikon-stand and the big portrait of Uncle Klavdy that hung facing his bed.
He had called up among others the spirit of his deceased uncle, Klavdy Mironitch, and had mentally asked him: "Has not the time come for me to transfer the ownership of our house to my wife?" To which his uncle's spirit had replied: "All things are good in their season." "There is a great deal in nature that is mysterious and . . . terrible . . ." thought Vaxin, as he got into bed.
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