Read "The Day of Atonement" by Vladimir Korolenko online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Yes, that is the adventure that befell the miller. Such a strange adventure it was that to this day no one has decided whether it really happened or not. If you say it was all a falsehood, I can answer that the miller was not a man to tell lies. Then, Gavrilo the workman is still living at the mill, and though he confesses himself that he was thoroughly drunk that night, he remembers clearly that the miller opened the door for him, and that his master's face was whiter than flour. And Yankel came back at dawn, and Opanas reached home drunk and without his boots, so it seems as if the miller could not really have dreamt it after all.
But then, again, take this: how could it be true, when the whole affair would have taken a year to happen and yet the miller ran barefoot into Galya's cottage the very next morning? A great many people actually saw him, and wondered why the miller was tearing barefoot across the fields to visit the girl.