It was a horrible night. It thundered very heavily and it lightened as if the heavens would take fire, while an ugly wind whistled savagely and raised an immense cloud of dust.
Pinocchio was afraid of thunder and lightning, but his hunger was greater than his fear. In a few hundred jumps he arrived at the edge of the town, out of breath, with his tongue hanging out on his chin, just like a hunting dog. But he found the town all dark and deserted. The stores were closed; the doors of the houses were shut and the windows were bolted; there was not even a dog in the streets; it appeared as if the town were dead.
Then Pinocchio despairingly pulled a doorbell of one of the houses and rang it with all his might, saying to himself, “Some one will come.”
Soon a cross old man with a nightcap on his head looked out of a window and cried: “What do you want at this hour?”
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