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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy**
+Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude
+#4 in our series by Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi
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+Also one by his son, Ilya Tolstoy
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+Master and Man
+
+by Leo Tolstoy
+
+Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude
+
+July, 1997  [Etext #986]
+
+
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+
+
+Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy
+Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude
+
+
+
+
+Master and Man
+
+
+
+I
+
+It happened in the 'seventies in winter, on the day after St.
+Nicholas's Day.  There was a fete in the parish and the
+innkeeper, Vasili Andreevich Brekhunov, a Second Guild
+merchant, being a church elder had to go to church, and had
+also to entertain his relatives and friends at home.
+
+But when the last of them had gone he at once began to prepare
+to drive over to see a neighbouring proprietor about a grove
+which he had been bargaining over for a long time.  He was now
+in a hurry to start, lest buyers from the town might forestall
+him in making a profitable purchase.
+
+The youthful landowner was asking ten thousand rubles for the
+grove simply because Vasili Andreevich was offering seven
+thousand.  Seven thousand was, however, only a third of its
+real value.  Vasili Andreevich might perhaps have got it down
+to his own price, for the woods were in his district and he had
+a long-standing agreement with the other village dealers that
+no one should run up the price in another's district, but he
+had now learnt that some timber-dealers from town meant to bid
+for the Goryachkin grove, and he resolved to go at once and get
+the matter settled.  So as soon as the feast was over, he took
+seven hundred rubles from his strong box, added to them two
+thousand three hundred rubles of church money he had in his
+keeping, so as to make up the sum to three thousand; carefully
+counted the notes, and having put them into his pocket-book
+made haste to start.
+
+Nikita, the only one of Vasili Andreevich's labourers who was
+not drunk that day, ran to harness the horse.  Nikita, though
+an habitual drunkard, was not drunk that day because since the
+last day before the fast, when he had drunk his coat and
+leather boots, he had sworn off drink and had kept his vow for
+two months, and was still keeping it despite the temptation of
+the vodka that had been drunk everywhere during the first two
+days of the feast.
+
+Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighbouring
+village, 'not a manager' as the peasants said of him, meaning
+that he was not the thrifty head of a household but lived most
+of his time away from home as a labourer.  He was valued
+everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and strength at work,
+and still more for his kindly and pleasant temper.  But he
+never settled down anywhere for long because about twice a
+year, or even oftener, he had a drinking bout, and then besides
+spending all his clothes on drink he became turbulent and
+quarrelsome.  Vasili Andreevich himself had turned him away
+several times, but had afterwards taken him back again--valuing
+his honesty, his kindness to animals, and especially his
+cheapness.  Vasili Andreevich did not pay Nikita the eighty
+rubles a year such a man was worth, but only about forty, which
+he gave him haphazard, in small sums, and even that mostly not
+in cash but in goods from his own shop and at high prices.
+
+Nikita's wife Martha, who had once been a handsome vigorous
+woman, managed the homestead with the help of her son and two
+daughters, and did not urge Nikita to live at home: first
+because she had been living for some twenty years already with
+a cooper, a peasant from another village who lodged in their
+house; and secondly because though she managed her husband as
+she pleased when he was sober, she feared him like fire when he
+was drunk.  Once when he had got drunk at home, Nikita,
+probably to make up for his submissiveness when sober, broke
+open her box, took out her best clothes, snatched up an axe,
+and chopped all her undergarments and dresses to bits.  All the
+wages Nikita earned went to his wife, and he raised no
+objection to that.  So now, two days before the holiday, Martha
+had been twice to see Vasili Andreevich and had got from him
+wheat flour, tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing
+three rubles, and also five rubles in cash, for which she
+thanked him as for a special favour, though he owed Nikita at
+least twenty rubles.
+
+'What agreement did we ever draw up with you?' said Vasili
+Andreevich to Nikita.  'If you need anything, take it; you will
+work it off.  I'm not like others to keep you waiting, and
+making up accounts and reckoning fines.  We deal
+straight-forwardly.  You serve me and I don't neglect you.'
+
+And when saying this Vasili Andreevich was honestly convinced
+that he was Nikita's benefactor, and he knew how to put it so
+plausibly that all those who depended on him for their money,
+beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the conviction that he
+was their benefactor and did not overreach them.
+
+'Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreevich.  You know that I serve
+you and take as much pains as I would for my own father.  I
+understand very well!' Nikita would reply.  He was quite aware
+that Vasili Andreevich was cheating him, but at the same time
+he felt that it was useless to try to clear up his accounts
+with him or explain his side of the matter, and that as long as
+he had nowhere to go he must accept what he could get.
+
+Now, having heard his master's order to harness, he went as
+usual cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly
+and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail
+the heavy tasselled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of
+the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he was to
+harness was standing by himself.
+
+'What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?' said
+Nikita in answer to the low whinny with which he was greeted by
+the good-tempered, medium-sized bay stallion, with a rather
+slanting crupper, who stood alone in the shed.  'Now then, now
+then, there's time enough.  Let me water you first,' he went
+on, speaking to the horse just as to someone who understood the
+words he was using, and having whisked the dusty, grooved back
+of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat, he
+put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and
+forelock, and having taken off his halter led him out to water.
+
+Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty
+frisked, and making play with his hind leg pretended that he
+meant to kick Nikita, who was running at a trot beside him to
+the pump.
+
+'Now then, now then, you rascal!' Nikita called out, well
+knowing how carefully Mukhorty threw out his hind leg just to
+touch his greasy sheepskin coat but not to strike him--a trick
+Nikita much appreciated.
+
+After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his
+strong wet lips, from the hairs of which transparent drops fell
+into the trough; then standing still as if in thought, he
+suddenly gave a loud snort.
+
+'If you don't want any more, you needn't.  But don't go asking
+for any later,' said Nikita quite seriously and fully
+explaining his conduct to Mukhorty.  Then he ran back to the
+shed pulling the playful young horse, who wanted to gambol all
+over the yard, by the rein.
+
+There was no one else in the yard except a stranger, the cook's
+husband, who had come for the holiday.
+
+'Go and ask which sledge is to be harnessed--the wide one or
+the small one--there's a good fellow!'
+
+The cook's husband went into the house, which stood on an iron
+foundation and was iron-roofed, and soon returned saying that
+the little one was to be harnessed.  By that time Nikita had
+put the collar and brass-studded belly-band on Mukhorty and,
+carrying a light, painted shaft-bow in one hand, was leading
+the horse with the other up to two sledges that stood in the
+shed.
+
+'All right, let it be the little one!' he said, backing the
+intelligent horse, which all the time kept pretending to bite
+him, into the shafts, and with the aid of the cook's husband he
+proceeded to harness.  When everything was nearly ready and
+only the reins had to be adjusted, Nikita sent the other man to
+the shed for some straw and to the barn for a drugget.
+
+'There, that's all right!  Now, now, don't bristle up!' said
+Nikita, pressing down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat
+straw the cook's husband had brought.  'And now let's spread
+the sacking like this, and the drugget over it.  There, like
+that it will be comfortable sitting,' he went on, suiting the
+action to the words and tucking the drugget all round over the
+straw to make a seat.
+
+'Thank you, dear man.  Things always go quicker with two
+working at it!' he added.  And gathering up the leather reins
+fastened together by a brass ring, Nikita took the driver's
+seat and started the impatient horse over the frozen manure
+which lay in the yard, towards the gate.
+
+'Uncle Nikita!  I say, Uncle, Uncle!' a high-pitched voice
+shouted, and a seven-year-old boy in a black sheepskin coat,
+new white felt boots, and a warm cap, ran hurriedly out of the
+house into the yard.  'Take me with you!' he cried, fastening
+up his coat as he ran.
+
+'All right, come along, darling!' said Nikita, and stopping the
+sledge he picked up the master's pale thin little son, radiant
+with joy, and drove out into the road.
+
+It was past two o'clock and the day was windy, dull, and cold,
+with more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit of frost.  Half the
+sky was hidden by a lowering dark cloud. In the yard it was
+quiet, but in the street the wind was felt more keenly.  The
+snow swept down from a neighbouring shed and whirled about in
+the corner near the bath-house.
+
+Hardly had Nikita driven out of the yard and turned the horse's
+head to the house, before Vasili Andreevich emerged from the
+high porch in front of the house with a cigarette in his mouth
+and wearing a cloth-covered sheep-skin coat tightly girdled low
+at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which
+squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and
+stopped.  Taking a last whiff of his cigarette he threw it
+down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke escape through his
+moustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming up,
+began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his
+ruddy face, clean-shaven except for the moustache, so that his
+breath should not moisten the collar.
+
+'See now!  The young scamp is there already!' he exclaimed when
+he saw his little son in the sledge.  Vasili Andreevich was
+excited by the vodka he had drunk with his visitors, and so he
+was even more pleased than usual with everything that was his
+and all that he did.  The sight of his son, whom he always
+thought of as his heir, now gave him great satisfaction.  He
+looked at him, screwing up his eyes and showing his long teeth.
+
+His wife--pregnant, thin and pale, with her head and shoulders
+wrapped in a shawl so that nothing of her face could be seen
+but her eyes--stood behind him in the vestibule to see him off.
+
+'Now really, you ought to take Nikita with you,' she said
+timidly, stepping out from the doorway.
+
+Vasili Andreevich did not answer.  Her words evidently annoyed
+him and he frowned angrily and spat.
+
+'You have money on you,' she continued in the same plaintive
+voice.  'What if the weather gets worse!  Do take him, for
+goodness' sake!'
+
+'Why?  Don't I know the road that I must needs take a guide?'
+exclaimed Vasili Andreevich, uttering every word very
+distinctly and compressing his lips unnaturally, as he usually
+did when speaking to buyers and sellers.
+
+'Really you ought to take him.  I beg you in God's name!' his
+wife repeated, wrapping her shawl more closely round her head.
+
+'There, she sticks to it like a leech! . . .  Where am I to
+take him?'
+
+'I'm quite ready to go with you, Vasili Andreevich,' said
+Nikita cheerfully.  'But they must feed the horses while I am
+away,' he added, turning to his master's wife.
+
+'I'll look after them, Nikita dear.  I'll tell Simon,' replied
+the mistress.
+
+'Well, Vasili Andreevich, am I to come with you?' said Nikita,
+awaiting a decision.
+
+'It seems I must humour my old woman.  But if you're coming
+you'd better put on a warmer cloak,' said Vasili Andreevich,
+smiling again as he winked at Nikita's short sheepskin coat,
+which was torn under the arms and at the back, was greasy and
+out of shape, frayed to a fringe round the skirt, and had
+endured many things in its lifetime.
+
+'Hey, dear man, come and hold the horse!' shouted Nikita to the
+cook's husband, who was still in the yard.
+
+'No, I will myself, I will myself!' shrieked the little boy,
+pulling his hands, red with cold, out of his pockets, and
+seizing the cold leather reins.
+
+'Only don't be too long dressing yourself up.  Look alive!'
+shouted Vasili Andreevich, grinning at Nikita.
+
+'Only a moment, Father, Vasili Andreevich!' replied Nikita, and
+running quickly with his inturned toes in his felt boots with
+their soles patched with felt, he hurried across the yard and
+into the workmen's hut.
+
+'Arinushka!  Get my coat down from the stove.  I'm going with
+the master,' he said, as he ran into the hut and took down his
+girdle from the nail on which it hung.
+
+The workmen's cook, who had had a sleep after dinner and was
+now getting the samovar ready for her husband, turned
+cheerfully to Nikita, and infected by his hurry  began to move
+as quickly as he did, got down his miserable worn-out cloth
+coat from the stove where it was drying, and began hurriedly
+shaking it out and smoothing it down.
+
+'There now, you'll have a chance of a holiday with your good
+man,' said Nikita, who from kindhearted politeness always said
+something to anyone he was alone with.
+
+Then, drawing his worn narrow girdle round him, he drew in his
+breath, pulling in his lean stomach still more, and girdled
+himself as tightly as he could over his sheepskin.
+
+'There now,' he said addressing himself no longer to the cook
+but the girdle, as he tucked the ends in at the waist, 'now you
+won't come undone!'  And working his shoulders up and down to
+free his arms, he put the coat over his sheepskin, arched his
+back more strongly to ease his arms, poked himself under the
+armpits, and took down his leather-covered mittens from the
+shelf.  'Now we're all right!'
+
+'You ought to wrap your feet up, Nikita.  Your boots are very
+bad.'
+
+Nikita stopped as if he had suddenly realized this.
+
+'Yes, I ought to. . . .  But they'll do like this.  It isn't
+far!' and he ran out into the yard.
+
+'Won't you be cold, Nikita?' said the mistress as he came up to
+the sledge.
+
+'Cold?  No, I'm quite warm,' answered Nikita as he pushed some
+straw up to the forepart of the sledge so that it should cover
+his feet, and stowed away the whip, which the good horse would
+not need, at the bottom of the sledge.
+
+Vasili Andreevich, who was wearing two fur-lined coats one over
+the other, was already in the sledge, his broad back filling
+nearly its whole rounded width, and taking the reins he
+immediately touched the horse.  Nikita jumped in just as the
+sledge started, and seated himself in front on the left side,
+with one leg hanging over the edge.
+
+
+
+II
+
+The good stallion took the sledge along at a brisk pace over
+the smooth-frozen road through the village, the runners
+squeaking slightly as they went.
+
+'Look at him hanging on there!  Hand me the whip, Nikita!'
+shouted Vasili Andreevich, evidently enjoying the sight of his
+'heir,' who standing on the runners was hanging on at the back
+of the sledge.  'I'll give it you!  Be off to mamma, you dog!'
+
+The boy jumped down.  The horse increased his amble and,
+suddenly changing foot, broke into a fast trot.
+
+The Crosses, the village where Vasili Andreevich lived,
+consisted of six houses.  As soon as they had passed the
+blacksmith's hut, the last in the village, they realized that
+the wind was much stronger than they had thought.  The road
+could hardly be seen.  The tracks left by the sledge-runners
+were immediately covered by snow and the road was only
+distinguished by the fact that it was higher than the rest of
+the ground.  There was a swirl of snow over the fields and the
+line where sky and earth met could not be seen.  The Telyatin
+forest, usually clearly visible, now only loomed up
+occasionally and dimly through the driving snowy dust.  The
+wind came from the left, insistently blowing over to one side
+the mane on Mukhorty's sleek neck  and carrying aside even his
+fluffy tail, which was tied in a simple knot.  Nikita's wide
+coat-collar, as he sat on the windy side, pressed close to his
+cheek and nose.
+
+'This road doesn't give him a chance--it's too snowy,' said
+Vasili Andreevich, who prided himself on his good horse.  'I
+once drove to Pashutino with him in half an hour.'
+
+'What?' asked Nikita, who could not hear on account of his
+collar.
+
+'I say I once went to Pashutino in half an hour,' shouted
+Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'It goes without saying that he's a good horse,' replied
+Nikita.
+
+They were silent for a while.  But Vasili Andreevich wished to
+talk.
+
+'Well, did you tell your wife not to give the cooper any
+vodka?' he began in the same loud tone, quite convinced that
+Nikita must feel flattered to be talking with so clever and
+important a person as himself, and he was so pleased with his
+jest that it did not enter his head that the remark might be
+unpleasant to Nikita.
+
+The wind again prevented Nikita's hearing his master's words.
+
+Vasili Andreevich repeated the jest about the cooper in his
+loud, clear voice.
+
+'That's their business, Vasili Andreevich.  I don't pry into
+their affairs.  As long as she doesn't ill-treat our boy--God
+be with them.'
+
+'That's so,' said Vasili Andreevich.  'Well, and will you be
+buying a horse in spring?' he went on, changing the subject.
+
+'Yes, I can't avoid it,' answered Nikita, turning down his
+collar and leaning back towards his master.
+
+The conversation now became interesting to him and he did not
+wish to lose a word.
+
+'The lad's growing up.  He must begin to plough for himself,
+but till now we've always had to hire someone,' he said.
+
+'Well, why not have the lean-cruppered one.  I won't charge
+much for it,' shouted Vasili Andreevich, feeling animated, and
+consequently starting on his favourite occupation--that of
+horse-dealing--which absorbed all his mental powers.
+
+'Or you might let me have fifteen rubles and I'll buy one at
+the horse-market,' said Nikita, who knew that the horse Vasili
+Andreevich wanted to sell him would be dear at seven rubles,
+but that if he took it from him it would be charged at
+twenty-five, and then he would be unable to draw any money for
+half a year.
+
+'It's a good horse.  I think of your interest as of my
+own--according to conscience.  Brekhunov isn't a man to wrong
+anyone.  Let the loss be mine.  I'm not like others. 
+Honestly!' he shouted in the voice in which he hypnotized his
+customers and dealers.  'It's a real good horse.'
+
+'Quite so!' said Nikita with a sigh, and convinced  that there
+was nothing more to listen to, he again released his collar,
+which immediately covered his ear and face.
+
+They drove on in silence for about half an hour.  The wind blew
+sharply onto Nikita's side and arm where his sheepskin was
+torn.
+
+He huddled up and breathed into the collar which covered his
+mouth, and was not wholly cold.
+
+'What do you think--shall we go through Karamyshevo or by the
+straight road?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+The road through Karamyshevo was more frequented and was well
+marked with a double row of high stakes.  The straight road was
+nearer but little used and had no stakes, or only poor ones
+covered with snow.
+
+Nikita thought awhile.
+
+'Though Karamyshevo is farther, it is better going,' he said.
+
+'But by the straight road, when once we get through the hollow
+by the forest, it's good going--sheltered,' said Vasili
+Andreevich, who wished to go the nearest way.
+
+'Just as you please,' said Nikita, and again let go of his
+collar.
+
+Vasili Andreevich did as he had said, and having gone about
+half a verst came to a tall oak stake which had a few dry
+leaves still dangling on it, and there he turned to the left.
+
+On turning they faced directly against the wind, and snow was
+beginning to fall.  Vasili Andreevich, who was driving,
+inflated his cheeks, blowing the breath out through his
+moustache.  Nikita dozed.
+
+So they went on in silence for about ten minutes.  Suddenly
+Vasili Andreevich began saying something.
+
+'Eh, what?' asked Nikita, opening his eyes.
+
+Vasili Andreevich did not answer, but bent over, looking behind
+them and then ahead of the horse.  The sweat had curled
+Mukhorty's coat between his legs and on his neck. He went at a
+walk.
+
+'What is it?' Nikita asked again.
+
+'What is it?  What is it?' Vasili Andreevich mimicked him
+angrily.  'There are no stakes to be seen!  We must have got
+off the road!'
+
+'Well, pull up then, and I'll look for it,' said Nikita, and
+jumping down lightly from the sledge and taking the whip from
+under the straw, he went off to the left from his own side of
+the sledge.
+
+The snow was not deep that year, so that it was possible to
+walk anywhere, but still in places it was knee-deep and got
+into Nikita's boots.  He went about feeling the ground with his
+feet and the whip, but could not find the road anywhere.
+
+'Well, how is it?' asked Vasili Andreevich when Nikita came
+back to the sledge.
+
+'There is no road this side.  I must go to the other side and
+try there,' said Nikita.
+
+'There's something there in front.  Go and have a look.'
+
+Nikita went to what had appeared dark, but found that it was
+earth which the wind had blown from the bare fields of winter
+oats and had strewn over the snow, colouring it. Having
+searched to the right also, he returned to the sledge, brushed
+the snow from his coat, shook it out of his boots, and seated
+himself once more.
+
+'We must go to the right,' he said decidedly.  'The wind was
+blowing on our left before, but now it is straight in my face. 
+Drive to the right,' he repeated with decision.
+
+Vasili Andreevich took his advice and turned to the right, but
+still there was no road.  They went on in that direction for
+some time.  The wind was as fierce as ever and it was snowing
+lightly.
+
+'It seems, Vasili Andreevich, that we have gone quite astray,'
+Nikita suddenly remarked, as if it were a pleasant thing. 
+'What is that?' he added, pointing to some potato vines that
+showed up from under the snow.
+
+Vasili Andreevich stopped the perspiring horse, whose deep
+sides were heaving heavily.
+
+'What is it?'
+
+'Why, we are on the Zakharov lands.  See where we've got to!'
+
+'Nonsense!' retorted Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'It's not nonsense, Vasili Andreevich.  It's the truth,'
+replied Nikita.  'You can feel that the sledge is going over a
+potato-field, and there are the heaps of vines which have been
+carted here.  It's the Zakharov factory land.'
+
+'Dear me, how we have gone astray!' said Vasili Andreevich. 
+'What are we to do now?'
+
+'We must go straight on, that's all.  We shall come out
+somewhere--if not at Zakharova, then at the proprietor's farm,'
+said Nikita.
+
+Vasili Andreevich agreed, and drove as Nikita had indicated. 
+So they went on for a considerable time.  At times they came
+onto bare fields and the sledge-runners rattled over frozen
+lumps of earth.  Sometimes they got onto a winter-rye field, or
+a fallow field on which they could see stalks of wormwood, and
+straws sticking up through the snow and swaying in the wind;
+sometimes they came onto deep and even white snow, above which
+nothing was to be seen.
+
+The snow was falling from above and sometimes rose from below. 
+The horse was evidently exhausted, his hair had all curled up
+from sweat and was covered with hoar-frost,  and he went at a
+walk.  Suddenly he stumbled and sat down in a ditch or
+water-course.  Vasili Andreevich wanted to stop, but Nikita
+cried to him:
+
+'Why stop?  We've got in and must get out.  Hey, pet! Hey,
+darling!  Gee up, old fellow!' he shouted in a cheerful tone to
+the horse, jumping out of the sledge and himself getting stuck
+in the ditch.
+
+The horse gave a start and quickly climbed out onto the frozen
+bank.  It was evidently a ditch that had been dug there.
+
+'Where are we now?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'We'll soon find out!' Nikita replied.  'Go on, we'll get
+somewhere.'
+
+'Why, this must be the Goryachkin forest!' said Vasili
+Andreevich, pointing to something dark that appeared amid the
+snow in front of them.
+
+'We'll see what forest it is when we get there,' said Nikita.
+
+He saw that beside the black thing they had noticed, dry,
+oblong willow-leaves were fluttering, and so he knew it was not
+a forest but a settlement, but he did not wish to say so.  And
+in fact they had not gone twenty-five yards beyond the ditch
+before something in front of them, evidently trees, showed up
+black, and they heard a new and melancholy sound.  Nikita had
+guessed right: it was not a wood, but a row of tall willows
+with a few leaves still fluttering on them here and there. 
+They had evidently been planted along the ditch round a
+threshing-floor.  Coming up to the willows, which moaned sadly
+in the wind, the horse suddenly planted his forelegs above the
+height of the sledge, drew up his hind legs also, pulling the
+sledge onto higher ground, and turned to the left, no longer
+sinking up to his knees in snow.  They were back on a road.
+
+'Well, here we are, but heaven only knows where!' said Nikita.
+
+The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted
+snow, and before they had gone another hundred yards the
+straight line of the dark wattle wall of a barn showed up black
+before them, its roof heavily covered with snow which poured
+down from it.  After passing the barn the road turned to the
+wind and they drove into a snow-drift.  But ahead of them was a
+lane with houses on either side, so evidently the snow had been
+blown across the road and they had to drive through the drift. 
+And so in fact it was.  Having driven through the snow they
+came out into a street.  At the end house of the village some
+frozen clothes hanging on a line--shirts, one red and one
+white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat--fluttered wildly
+in the wind.  The white shirt in particular struggled
+desperately, waving its sleeves about.
+
+'There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her
+clothes down before the holiday,' remarked Nikita, looking at
+the fluttering shirts.
+
+
+
+III
+
+At the entrance to the street the wind still raged and the road
+was thickly covered with snow, but well within the village it
+was calm, warm, and cheerful.  At one house a dog was barking,
+at another a woman, covering her head with her coat, came
+running from somewhere and entered the door of a hut, stopping
+on the threshold to have a look at the passing sledge.  In the
+middle of the village girls could be heard singing.
+
+Here in the village there seemed to be less wind and snow, and
+the frost was less keen.
+
+'Why, this is Grishkino,' said Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'So it is,' responded Nikita.
+
+It really was Grishkino, which meant that they had gone too far
+to the left and had travelled some six miles, not quite in the
+direction they aimed at, but towards their destination for all
+that.
+
+From Grishkino to Goryachkin was about another four miles.
+
+In the middle of the village they almost ran into a tall man
+walking down the middle of the street.
+
+'Who are you?' shouted the man, stopping the horse, and
+recognizing Vasili Anereevich he immediately took hold of the
+shaft, went along it hand over hand till he reached the sledge,
+and placed himself on the driver's seat.
+
+He was Isay, a peasant of Vasili Andreevich's acquaintance, and
+well known as the principal horse-thief in the district.
+
+'Ah, Vasili Andreevich!  Where are you off to?' said Isay,
+enveloping Nikita in the odour of the vodka he had drunk.
+
+'We were going to Goryachkin.'
+
+'And look where you've got to!  You should have gone through
+Molchanovka.'
+
+'Should have, but didn't manage it,' said Vasili Andreevich,
+holding in the horse.
+
+'That's a good horse,' said Isay, with a shrewd glance at
+Mukhorty, and with a practised hand he tightened the loosened
+knot high in the horse's bushy tail.
+
+'Are you going to stay the night?'
+
+'No, friend.  I must get on.'
+
+'Your business must be pressing.  And who is this?  Ah, Nikita
+Stepanych!'
+
+'Who else?' replied Nikita.  'But I say, good friend, how are
+we to avoid going astray again?'
+
+'Where can you go astray here?  Turn back straight down the
+street and then when you come out keep straight on. Don't take
+to the left.  You will come out onto the high road, and then
+turn to the right.'
+
+'And where do we turn off the high road?  As in summer, or the
+winter way?' asked Nikita.
+
+'The winter way.  As soon as you turn off you'll see some
+bushes, and opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one
+with branches--and that's the way.'
+
+Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the
+outskirts of the village.
+
+'Why not stay the night?' Isay shouted after them.
+
+But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse. 
+Four miles of good road, two of which lay through the forest,
+seemed easy to manage, especially as the wind was apparently
+quieter and the snow had stopped.
+
+Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here
+and there by fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung
+out and where the white shirt had broken loose and was now
+attached only by one frozen sleeve, they again came within
+sound of the weird moan of the willows, and again emerged on
+the open fields.  The storm, far from ceasing, seemed to have
+grown yet stronger.  The road was completely covered with
+drifting snow, and only the stakes showed that they had not
+lost their way.  But even the stakes ahead of them were not
+easy to see, since the wind blew in their faces.
+
+Vasili Andreevich screwed up his eyes, bent down his head, and
+looked out for the way-marks, but trusted mainly to the horse's
+sagacity, letting it take its own way.  And the horse really
+did not lose the road but followed its windings, turning now to
+the right and now to the left and sensing it under his feet, so
+that though the snow fell thicker and the wind strengthened
+they still continued to see way-marks now to the left and now
+to the right of them.
+
+So they travelled on for about ten minutes, when suddenly,
+through the slanting screen of wind-driven snow, something
+black showed up which moved in front of the horse.
+
+This was another sledge with fellow-travellers.  Mukhorty
+overtook them, and struck his hoofs against the back of the
+sledge in front of them.
+
+'Pass on . . . hey there . . . get in front!' cried voices from
+the sledge.
+
+Vasili Andreevich swerved aside to pass the other sledge.
+
+In it sat three men and a woman, evidently visitors returning
+from a feast.  One peasant was whacking the snow-covered croup
+of their little horse with a long switch, and the other two
+sitting in front waved their arms and shouted something.  The
+woman, completely wrapped up and covered with snow, sat
+drowsing and bumping at the back.
+
+'Who are you?' shouted Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'From A-a-a . . .' was all that could be heard.
+
+'I say, where are you from?'
+
+'From A-a-a-a!' one of the peasants shouted with all his might,
+but still it was impossible to make out who they were.
+
+'Get along!  Keep up!' shouted another, ceaselessly  beating
+his horse with the switch.
+
+'So you're from a feast, it seems?'
+
+'Go on, go on!  Faster, Simon!  Get in front!  Faster!'
+
+The wings of the sledges bumped against one another, almost got
+jammed but managed to separate, and the peasants' sledge began
+to fall behind.
+
+Their shaggy, big-bellied horse, all covered with snow,
+breathed heavily under the low shaft-bow and, evidently using
+the last of its strength, vainly endeavoured to escape from the
+switch, hobbling with its short legs through the deep snow
+which it threw up under itself.
+
+Its muzzle, young-looking, with the nether lip drawn up like
+that of a fish, nostrils distended and ears pressed back from
+fear, kept up for a few seconds near Nikita's shoulder and then
+began to fall behind.
+
+'Just see what liquor does!' said Nikita.  'They've tired that
+little horse to death.  What pagans!'
+
+For a few minutes they heard the panting of the tired little
+horse and the drunken shouting of the peasants.  Then the
+panting and the shouts died away, and around them nothing could
+be heard but the whistling of the wind in their ears and now
+and then the squeak of their sledge-runners over a windswept
+part of the road.
+
+This encounter cheered and enlivened Vasili Andreevich, and he
+drove on more boldly without examining the way-marks, urging on
+the horse and trusting to him.
+
+Nikita had nothing to do, and as usual in such  circumstances
+he drowsed, making up for much sleepless time. Suddenly the
+horse stopped and Nikita nearly fell forward onto his nose.
+
+'You know we're off the track again!' said Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'How's that?'
+
+'Why, there are no way-marks to be seen.  We must have got off
+the road again.'
+
+'Well, if we've lost the road we must find it,' said Nikita
+curtly, and getting out and stepping lightly on his pigeon-toed
+feet he started once more going about on the snow.
+
+He walked about for a long time, now disappearing and now
+reappearing, and finally he came back.
+
+'There is no road here.  There may be farther on,' he said,
+getting into the sledge.
+
+It was already growing dark.  The snow-storm had not increased
+but had also not subsided.
+
+'If we could only hear those peasants!' said Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'Well they haven't caught us up.  We must have gone far astray. 
+Or maybe they have lost their way too.'
+
+'Where are we to go then?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'Why, we must let the horse take its own way,' said Nikita. 
+'He will take us right.  Let me have the reins.'
+
+Vasili Andreevich gave him the reins, the more willingly
+because his hands were beginning to feel frozen in his thick
+gloves.
+
+Nikita took the reins, but only held them, trying not to shake
+them and rejoicing at his favourite's sagacity.  And indeed the
+clever horse, turning first one ear and then the other now to
+one side and then to the other, began to wheel round.
+
+'The one thing he can't do is to talk,' Nikita kept saying. 
+'See what he is doing!  Go on, go on!  You know best. That's
+it, that's it!'
+
+The wind was now blowing from behind and it felt warmer.
+
+'Yes, he's clever,' Nikita continued, admiring the horse.  'A
+Kirgiz horse is strong but stupid.  But this one--just see what
+he's doing with his ears!  He doesn't need any telegraph.  He
+can scent a mile off.'
+
+Before another half-hour had passed they saw something dark
+ahead of them--a wood or a village--and stakes again appeared
+to the right.  They had evidently come out onto the road.
+
+'Why, that's Grishkino again!' Nikita suddenly exclaimed.
+
+And indeed, there on their left was that same barn with the
+snow flying from it, and farther on the same line with the
+frozen washing, shirts and trousers, which still fluttered
+desperately in the wind.
+
+Again they drove into the street and again it grew quiet, warm,
+and cheerful, and again they could see the manure-stained
+street and hear voices and songs and the barking of a dog.  It
+was already so dark that there were lights in some of the
+windows.
+
+Half-way through the village Vasili Andreevich turned the horse
+towards a large double-fronted brick house and stopped at the
+porch.
+
+Nikita went to the lighted snow-covered window, in the rays of
+which flying snow-flakes glittered, and knocked at it with his
+whip.
+
+'Who is there?' a voice replied to his knock.
+
+'From Kresty, the Brekhunovs, dear fellow,' answered Nikita. 
+'Just come out for a minute.'
+
+Someone moved from the window, and a minute or two later there
+was the sound of the passage door as it came unstuck, then the
+latch of the outside door clicked and a tall white-bearded
+peasant, with a sheepskin coat thrown over his white holiday
+shirt, pushed his way out holding the door firmly against the
+wind, followed by a lad in a red shirt and high leather boots.
+
+'Is that you, Andreevich?' asked the old man.
+
+'Yes, friend, we've gone astray,' said Vasili Andreevich.  'We
+wanted to get to Goryachkin but found ourselves here.  We went
+a second time but lost our way again.'
+
+'Just see how you have gone astray!' said the old man.
+'Petrushka, go and open the gate!' he added, turning to the lad
+in the red shirt.
+
+'All right,' said the lad in a cheerful voice, and ran back
+into the passage.
+
+'But we're not staying the night,' said Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'Where will you go in the night?  You'd better stay!'
+
+'I'd be glad to, but I must go on.  It's business, and it can't
+be helped.'
+
+'Well, warm yourself at least.  The samovar is just ready.'
+
+'Warm myself?  Yes, I'll do that,' said Vasili Andreevich.  'It
+won't get darker.  The moon will rise and it will be lighter. 
+Let's go in and warm ourselves, Nikita.'
+
+'Well, why not?  Let us warm ourselves,' replied Nikita, who
+was stiff with cold and anxious to warm his frozen limbs.
+
+Vasili Andreevich went into the room with the old man, and
+Nikita drove through the gate opened for him by Petrushka, by
+whose advice he backed the horse under the penthouse.  The
+ground was covered with manure and the tall bow over the
+horse's head caught against the beam.  The hens and the cock
+had already settled to roost there, and clucked peevishly,
+clinging to the beam with their claws. The disturbed sheep
+shied and rushed aside trampling the frozen manure with their
+hooves.  The dog yelped desperately  with fright and anger and
+then burst out barking like a puppy  at the stranger.
+
+Nikita talked to them all, excused himself to the fowls and
+assured them that he would not disturb them again, rebuked the
+sheep for being frightened without knowing why, and kept
+soothing the dog, while he tied up the horse.
+
+'Now that will be all right,' he said, knocking the snow off
+his clothes.  'Just hear how he barks!' he added, turning to
+the dog.  'Be quiet, stupid!  Be quiet.  You are only troubling
+yourself for nothing.  We're not thieves, we're friends. . . .'
+
+'And these are, it's said, the three domestic counsellors,'
+remarked the lad, and with his strong arms he pushed under the
+pent-roof the sledge that had remained outside.
+
+'Why counsellors?' asked Nikita.
+
+'That's what is printed in Paulson.  A thief creeps to a
+house--the dog barks, that means "Be on your guard!" The cock
+crows, that means, "Get up!"  The cat licks herself--that
+means, "A welcome guest is coming.  Get ready to receive him!"'
+said the lad with a smile.
+
+Petrushka could read and write and knew Paulson's primer, his
+only book, almost by heart, and he was fond of quoting sayings
+from it that he thought suited the occasion, especially when he
+had had something to drink, as to-day.
+
+'That's so,' said Nikita.
+
+'You must be chilled through and through,' said Petrushka.
+
+'Yes, I am rather,' said Nikita, and they went across the yard
+and the passage into the house.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The household to which Vasili Andreevich had come was one of
+the richest in the village.  The family had five allotments,
+besides renting other land.  They had six horses, three cows,
+two calves, and some twenty sheep.  There were twenty-two
+members belonging to the homestead:  four married sons, six
+grandchildren (one of whom, Petrushka, was married), two
+great-grandchildren, three orphans, and four daughters-in-law
+with their babies.  It was one of the few homesteads that
+remained still undivided, but even here the dull internal work
+of disintegration which would inevitably lead to separation had
+already begun, starting as usual among the women.  Two sons
+were living in Moscow as water-carriers, and one was in the
+army.  At home now were the old man and his wife, their second
+son who managed the homestead, the eldest who had come from
+Moscow for the holiday, and all the women and children. 
+Besides these members of the family there was a visitor, a
+neighbour who was godfather to one of the children.
+
+Over the table in the room hung a lamp with a shade, which
+brightly lit up the tea-things, a bottle of vodka, and some
+refreshments, besides illuminating the brick walls, which in
+the far corner were hung with icons on both sides of which were
+pictures.  At the head of the table sat Vasili Andreevich in a
+black sheepskin coat, sucking his frozen moustache and
+observing the room and the people around him with his prominent
+hawk-like eyes.  With him sat the old, bald, white-bearded
+master of the house in a white homespun shirt, and next him the
+son home from Moscow for the holiday--a man with a sturdy back
+and powerful shoulders and clad in a thin print shirt--then the
+second son, also broad-shouldered, who acted as head of the
+house, and then a lean red-haired peasant--the neighbour.
+
+Having had a drink of vodka and something to eat, they were
+about to take tea, and the samovar standing on the floor beside
+the brick oven was already humming.  The children could be seen
+in the top bunks and on the top of the oven.  A woman sat on a
+lower bunk with a cradle beside her.  The old housewife, her
+face covered with wrinkles which wrinkled even her lips, was
+waiting on Vasili Andreevich.
+
+As Nikita entered the house she was offering her guest a small
+tumbler of thick glass which she had just filled with vodka.
+
+'Don't refuse, Vasili Andreevich, you mustn't!  Wish us a merry
+feast.  Drink it, dear!' she said.
+
+The sight and smell of vodka, especially now when he was
+chilled through and tired out, much disturbed Nikita's mind. 
+He frowned, and having shaken the snow off his cap and coat,
+stopped in front of the icons as if not seeing anyone, crossed
+himself three times, and bowed to the icons.  Then, turning to
+the old master of the house and bowing first to him, then to
+all those at table, then to the women who stood by the oven,
+and muttering: 'A merry holiday!' he began taking off his outer
+things without looking at the table.
+
+'Why, you're all covered with hoar-frost, old fellow!' said the
+eldest brother, looking at Nikita's snow-covered face, eyes,
+and beard.
+
+Nikita took off his coat, shook it again, hung it up beside the
+oven, and came up to the table.  He too was offered vodka.  He
+went through a moment of painful hesitation and nearly took up
+the glass and emptied the clear fragrant liquid down his
+throat, but he glanced at Vasili Andreevich, remembered his
+oath and the boots that he had sold for drink, recalled the
+cooper, remembered his son for whom he had promised to buy a
+horse by spring, sighed, and declined it.
+
+'I don't drink, thank you kindly,' he said frowning, and sat
+down on a bench near the second window.
+
+'How's that?' asked the eldest brother.
+
+'I just don't drink,' replied Nikita without lifting his eyes
+but looking askance at his scanty beard and moustache and
+getting the icicles out of them.
+
+'It's not good for him,' said Vasili Andreevich, munching a
+cracknel after emptying his glass.
+
+'Well, then, have some tea,' said the kindly old hostess. 'You
+must be chilled through, good soul.  Why are you women dawdling
+so with the samovar?'
+
+'It is ready,' said one of the young women, and after flicking
+with her apron the top of the samovar which was now boiling
+over, she carried it with an effort to the table, raised it,
+and set it down with a thud.
+
+Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich was telling how he had lost his
+way, how they had come back twice to this same village, and how
+they had gone astray and had met some drunken peasants.  Their
+hosts were surprised, explained where and why they had missed
+their way, said who the tipsy people they had met were, and
+told them how they ought to go.
+
+'A little child could find the way to Molchanovka from here. 
+All you have to do is to take the right turning from the high
+road.  There's a bush you can see just there.  But you didn't
+even get that far!' said the neighbour.
+
+'You'd better stay the night.  The women will make up beds for
+you,' said the old woman persuasively.
+
+'You could go on in the morning and it would be pleasanter,'
+said the old man, confirming what his wife had said.
+
+'I can't, friend.  Business!' said Vasili Andreevich.  'Lose an
+hour and you can't catch it up in a year,' he added,
+remembering the grove and the dealers who might snatch that
+deal from him.  'We shall get there, shan't we?' he said,
+turning to Nikita.
+
+Nikita did not answer for some time, apparently still intent on
+thawing out his beard and moustache.
+
+'If only we don't go astray again,' he replied gloomily. He was
+gloomy because he passionately longed for some vodka, and the
+only thing that could assuage that longing was tea and he had
+not yet been offered any.
+
+'But we have only to reach the turning and then we shan't go
+wrong.  The road will be through the forest the whole way,'
+said Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'It's just as you please, Vasili Andreevich.  If we're to go,
+let us go,' said Nikita, taking the glass of tea he was
+offered.
+
+'We'll drink our tea and be off.'
+
+Nikita said nothing but only shook his head, and  carefully
+pouring some tea into his saucer began warming his hands, the
+fingers of which were always swollen with hard work, over the
+steam.  Then, biting off a tiny bit of sugar, he bowed to his
+hosts, said, 'Your health!' and drew in the steaming liquid.
+
+'If somebody would see us as far as the turning,' said Vasili
+Andreevich.
+
+'Well, we can do that,' said the eldest son.  'Petrushka will
+harness and go that far with you.'
+
+'Well, then, put in the horse, lad, and I shall be  thankful to
+you for it.'
+
+'Oh, what for, dear man?' said the kindly old woman. 'We are
+heartily glad to do it.'
+
+'Petrushka, go and put in the mare,' said the eldest brother.
+
+'All right,' replied Petrushka with a smile, and promptly
+snatching his cap down from a nail he ran away to harness.
+
+While the horse was being harnessed the talk returned to the
+point at which it had stopped when Vasili Andreevich drove up
+to the window.  The old man had been complaining  to his
+neighbour, the village elder, about his third son who had not
+sent him anything for the holiday though he had sent a French
+shawl to his wife.
+
+'The young people are getting out of hand,' said the old man.
+
+'And how they do!' said the neighbour.  'There's no managing
+them!  They know too much.  There's Demochkin now, who broke
+his father's arm.  It's all from being too clever, it seems.'
+
+Nikita listened, watched their faces, and evidently would have
+liked to share in the conversation, but he was too busy
+drinking his tea and only nodded his head approvingly.  He
+emptied one tumbler after another and grew warmer and warmer
+and more and more comfortable.  The talk continued on the same
+subject for a long time--the harmfulness of a household
+dividing up--and it was clearly not an abstract discussion but
+concerned the question of a separation in that house; a
+separation demanded by the second son who sat there morosely
+silent.
+
+It was evidently a sore subject and absorbed them all, but out
+of propriety they did not discuss their private affairs before
+strangers.  At last, however, the old man could not restrain
+himself, and with tears in his eyes declared that he would not
+consent to a break-up of the family during his lifetime, that
+his house was prospering, thank God, but that if they separated
+they would all have to go begging.
+
+'Just like the Matveevs,' said the neighbour.  'They used to
+have a proper house, but now they've split up none of them has
+anything.'
+
+'And that is what you want to happen to us,' said the old man,
+turning to his son.
+
+The son made no reply and there was an awkward pause.  The
+silence was broken by Petrushka, who having harnessed the horse
+had returned to the hut a few minutes before this and had been
+listening all the time with a smile.
+
+'There's a fable about that in Paulson,' he said.  'A father
+gave his sons a broom to break.  At first they could not break
+it, but when they took it twig by twig they broke it easily. 
+And it's the same here,' and he gave a broad smile.  'I'm
+ready!' he added.
+
+'If you're ready, let's go,' said Vasili Andreevich.  'And as
+to separating, don't you allow it, Grandfather.  You got
+everything together and you're the master.  Go to the Justice
+of the Peace.  He'll say how things should be done.'
+
+'He carries on so, carries on so,' the old man continued in a
+whining tone.  'There's no doing anything with him.  It's as if
+the devil possessed him.'
+
+Nikita having meanwhile finished his fifth tumbler of tea laid
+it on its side instead of turning it upside down, hoping to be
+offered a sixth glass.  But there was no more water in the
+samovar, so the hostess did not fill it up for him.  Besides,
+Vasili Andreevich was putting his things on, so there was
+nothing for it but for Nikita to get up too, put back into the
+sugar-basin the lump of sugar he had nibbled all round, wipe
+his perspiring face with the skirt of his sheepskin, and go to
+put on his overcoat.
+
+Having put it on he sighed deeply, thanked his hosts, said
+good-bye, and went out of the warm bright room into the cold
+dark passage, through which the wind was howling  and where
+snow was blowing through the cracks of the shaking door, and
+from there into the yard.
+
+Petrushka stood in his sheepskin in the middle of the yard by
+his horse, repeating some lines from Paulson's primer.  He said
+with a smile:
+
+
+     'Storms with mist the sky conceal,
+      Snowy circles wheeling wild.
+      Now like savage beast 'twill howl,
+      And now 'tis wailing like a child.'
+
+
+Nikita nodded approvingly as he arranged the reins.
+
+The old man, seeing Vasili Andreevich off, brought a lantern
+into the passage to show him a light, but it was blown out at
+once.  And even in the yard it was evident that the snowstorm
+had become more violent.
+
+'Well, this is weather!' thought Vasili Andreevich.  'Perhaps
+we may not get there after all.  But there is nothing to be
+done.  Business!  Besides, we have got ready, our host's horse
+has been harnessed, and we'll get there with God's help!'
+
+Their aged host also thought they ought not to go, but he had
+already tried to persuade them to stay and had not been
+listened to.
+
+'It's no use asking them again.  Maybe my age makes me timid. 
+They'll get there all right, and at least we shall get to bed
+in good time and without any fuss,' he thought.
+
+Petrushka did not think of danger.  He knew the road and the
+whole district so well, and the lines about 'snowy circles
+wheeling wild' described what was happening outside so aptly
+that it cheered him up.  Nikita did not wish to go at all, but
+he had been accustomed not to have his own way and to serve
+others for so long that there was no one to hinder the
+departing travellers.
+
+
+
+V
+
+Vasili Andreevich went over to his sledge, found it with
+difficulty in the darkness, climbed in and took the reins.
+
+'Go on in front!' he cried.
+
+Petrushka kneeling in his low sledge started his horse.
+Mukhorty, who had been neighing for some time past, now
+scenting a mare ahead of him started after her, and they drove
+out into the street.  They drove again through the outskirts of
+the village and along the same road, past the yard where the
+frozen linen had hung (which, however, was no longer to be
+seen), past the same barn, which was now snowed up almost to
+the roof and from which the snow was still endlessly pouring
+past the same dismally moaning, whistling, and swaying willows,
+and again entered  into the sea of blustering snow raging from
+above and below.  The wind was so strong that when it blew from
+the side and the travellers steered against it, it tilted the
+sledges and turned the horses to one side.  Petrushka drove his
+good mare in front at a brisk trot and kept shouting lustily. 
+Mukhorty pressed after her.
+
+After travelling so for about ten minutes, Petrushka turned
+round and shouted something.  Neither Vasili Andreevich nor
+Nikita could hear anything because of the wind, but they
+guessed that they had arrived at the turning.  In fact
+Petrushka had turned to the right, and now the wind that had
+blown from the side blew straight in their faces, and through
+the snow they saw something dark on their right.  It was the
+bush at the turning.
+
+'Well now, God speed you!'
+
+'Thank you, Petrushka!'
+
+'Storms with mist the sky conceal!' shouted Petrushka as he
+disappeared.
+
+'There's a poet for you!' muttered Vasili Andreevich, pulling
+at the reins.
+
+'Yes, a fine lad--a true peasant,' said Nikita.
+
+They drove on.
+
+Nikita, wrapping his coat closely about him and pressing his
+head down so close to his shoulders that his short beard
+covered his throat, sat silently, trying not to lose the warmth
+he had obtained while drinking tea in the house.  Before him he
+saw the straight lines of the shafts which constantly deceived
+him into thinking they were on a well-travelled road, and the
+horse's swaying crupper with his knotted tail blown to one
+side, and farther ahead the high shaft-bow and the swaying head
+and neck of the horse with its waving mane.  Now and then he
+caught sight of a way-sign, so that he knew they were still on
+a road and that there was nothing for him to be concerned
+about.
+
+Vasili Andreevich drove on, leaving it to the horse to keep to
+the road.  But Mukhorty, though he had had a breathing-space in
+the village, ran reluctantly, and seemed now and then to get
+off the road, so that Vasili Andreevich had repeatedly to
+correct him.
+
+'Here's a stake to the right, and another, and here's a third,'
+Vasili Andreevich counted, 'and here in front is the forest,'
+thought he, as he looked at something dark in front of him. 
+But what had seemed to him a forest was only a bush.  They
+passed the bush and drove on for another  hundred yards but
+there was no fourth way-mark nor any forest.
+
+'We must reach the forest soon,' thought Vasili Andreevich, and
+animated by the vodka and the tea he did not stop but shook the
+reins, and the good obedient horse responded, now ambling, now
+slowly trotting in the direction in which he was sent, though
+he knew that he was not going the right way.  Ten minutes went
+by, but there was still no forest.
+
+'There now, we must be astray again,' said Vasili Andreevich,
+pulling up.
+
+Nikita silently got out of the sledge and holding his coat,
+which the wind now wrapped closely about him and now almost
+tore off, started to feel about in the snow, going first to one
+side and then to the other.  Three or four times he was
+completely lost to sight.  At last he returned and took the
+reins from Vasili Andreevich's hand.
+
+'We must go to the right,' he said sternly and peremptorily, as
+he turned the horse.
+
+'Well, if it's to the right, go to the right,' said Vasili
+Andreevich, yielding up the reins to Nikita and thrusting his
+freezing hands into his sleeves.
+
+Nikita did not reply.
+
+'Now then, friend, stir yourself!' he shouted to the horse, but
+in spite of the shake of the reins Mukhorty moved only at a
+walk.
+
+The snow in places was up to his knees, and the sledge moved by
+fits and starts with his every movement.
+
+Nikita took the whip that hung over the front of the sledge and
+struck him once.  The good horse, unused to the whip, sprang
+forward and moved at a trot, but immediately fell back into an
+amble and then to a walk.  So they went on for five minutes. 
+It was dark and the snow whirled from above and rose from
+below, so that sometimes the shaft-bow could not be seen.  At
+times the sledge seemed to stand still and the field to run
+backwards.  Suddenly the horse stopped abruptly, evidently
+aware of something close in front of him.  Nikita again sprang
+lightly out, throwing down the reins, and went ahead to see
+what had brought him to a standstill, but hardly had he made a
+step in front of the horse before his feet slipped and he went
+rolling down an incline.
+
+'Whoa, whoa, whoa!' he said to himself as he fell, and he tried
+to stop his fall but could not, and only stopped when his feet
+plunged into a thick layer of snow that had drifted to the
+bottom of the hollow.
+
+The fringe of a drift of snow that hung on the edge of the
+hollow, disturbed by Nikita's fall, showered down on him and
+got inside his collar.
+
+'What a thing to do!' said Nikita reproachfully,  addressing
+the drift and the hollow and shaking the snow from under his
+collar.
+
+'Nikita!  Hey, Nikita!' shouted Vasili Andreevich from above.
+
+But Nikita did not reply.  He was too occupied in shaking out
+the snow and searching for the whip he had dropped when rolling
+down the incline.  Having found the whip he tried to climb
+straight up the bank where he had rolled down, but it was
+impossible to do so: he kept rolling down again, and so he had
+to go along at the foot of the hollow to find a way up.  About
+seven yards farther on he managed with difficulty to crawl up
+the incline on all fours, then he followed the edge of the
+hollow back to the place where the horse should have been.  He
+could not see either horse or sledge, but as he walked against
+the wind he heard Vasili Andreevich's shouts and  Mukhorty's
+neighing, calling him.
+
+'I'm coming!  I'm coming!  What are you cackling for?' he
+muttered.
+
+Only when he had come up to the sledge could he make out the
+horse, and Vasili Andreevich standing beside it and looking
+gigantic.
+
+'Where the devil did you vanish to?  We must go back, if only
+to Grishkino,' he began reproaching Nikita.
+
+'I'd be glad to get back, Vasili Andreevich, but which way are
+we to go?  There is such a ravine here that if we once get in
+it we shan't get out again.  I got stuck so fast there myself
+that I could hardly get out.'
+
+'What shall we do, then?  We can't stay here!  We must go
+somewhere!' said Vasili Andreevich.
+
+Nikita said nothing.  He seated himself in the sledge with his
+back to the wind, took off his boots, shook out the snow that
+had got into them, and taking some straw from the bottom of the
+sledge, carefully plugged with it a hole in his left boot.
+
+Vasili Andreevich remained silent, as though now leaving
+everything to Nikita.  Having put his boots on again, Nikita
+drew his feet into the sledge, put on his mittens and took up
+the reins, and directed the horse along the side of the ravine. 
+But they had not gone a hundred yards before the horse again
+stopped short.  The ravine was in front of him again.
+
+Nikita again climbed out and again trudged about in the snow. 
+He did this for a considerable time and at last appeared from
+the opposite side to that from which he had started.
+
+'Vasili Andreevich, are you alive?' he called out.
+
+'Here!' replied Vasili Andreevich.  'Well, what now?'
+
+'I can't make anything out.  It's too dark.  There's nothing
+but ravines.  We must drive against the wind again.'
+
+They set off once more.  Again Nikita went stumbling through
+the snow, again he fell in, again climbed out and trudged
+about, and at last quite out of breath he sat down beside the
+sledge.
+
+'Well, how now?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'Why, I am quite worn out and the horse won't go.'
+
+'Then what's to be done?'
+
+'Why, wait a minute.'
+
+Nikita went away again but soon returned.
+
+'Follow me!' he said, going in front of the horse.
+
+Vasili Andreevich no longer gave orders but implicitly did what
+Nikita told him.
+
+'Here, follow me!' Nikita shouted, stepping quickly to the
+right, and seizing the rein he led Mukhorty down towards a
+snow-drift.
+
+At first the horse held back, then he jerked forward, hoping to
+leap the drift, but he had not the strength and sank into it up
+to his collar.
+
+'Get out!' Nikita called to Vasili Andreevich who still sat in
+the sledge, and taking hold of one shaft he moved the sledge
+closer to the horse.  'It's hard, brother!' he said to
+Mukhorty, 'but it can't be helped.  Make an effort!  Now, now,
+just a little one!' he shouted.
+
+The horse gave a tug, then another, but failed to clear himself
+and settled down again as if considering something.
+
+'Now, brother, this won't do!' Nikita admonished him. 'Now once
+more!'
+
+Again Nikita tugged at the shaft on his side, and Vasili
+Andreevich did the same on the other.
+
+Mukhorty lifted his head and then gave a sudden jerk.
+
+'That's it!  That's it!' cried Nikita.  'Don't be afraid--you
+won't sink!'
+
+One plunge, another, and a third, and at last Mukhorty was out
+of the snow-drift, and stood still, breathing heavily and
+shaking the snow off himself.  Nikita wished to lead him
+farther, but Vasili Andreevich, in his two fur coats, was so
+out of breath that he could not walk farther and dropped into
+the sledge.
+
+'Let me get my breath!' he said, unfastening the kerchief with
+which he had tied the collar of his fur coat at the village.
+
+'It's all right here.  You lie there,' said Nikita.  'I will
+lead him along.'  And with Vasili Andreevich in the sledge he
+led the horse by the bridle about ten paces down and then up a
+slight rise, and stopped.
+
+The place where Nikita had stopped was not completely in the
+hollow where the snow sweeping down from the hillocks might
+have buried them altogether, but still it was partly sheltered
+from the wind by the side of the ravine. There were moments
+when the wind seemed to abate a little, but that did not last
+long and as if to make up for that respite the storm swept down
+with tenfold vigour and tore and whirled the more fiercely. 
+Such a gust struck them at the moment when Vasili Andreevich,
+having  recovered his breath, got out of the sledge and went up
+to Nikita to consult him as to what they should do.  They both
+bent down involuntarily and waited till the violence of the
+squall should have passed.  Mukhorty too laid back his ears and
+shook his head discontentedly.  As soon as the violence of the
+blast had abated a little, Nikita took off his mittens, stuck
+them into his belt, breathed onto his hands, and began to undo
+the straps of the shaft-bow.
+
+'What's that you are doing there?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'Unharnessing.  What else is there to do?  I have no strength
+left,' said Nikita as though excusing himself.
+
+'Can't we drive somewhere?'
+
+'No, we can't.  We shall only kill the horse.  Why, the poor
+beast is not himself now,' said Nikita, pointing to the horse,
+which was standing submissively waiting for what might come,
+with his steep wet sides heaving heavily. 'We shall have to
+stay the night here,' he said, as if preparing  to spend the
+night at an inn, and he proceeded to unfasten the
+collar-straps.  The buckles came undone.
+
+'But shan't we be frozen?' remarked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'Well, if we are we can't help it,' said Nikita.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur
+coats, especially after struggling in the snow-drift, a cold
+shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend
+the night where they were.  To calm himself he sat down in the
+sledge and got out his cigarettes and matches.
+
+Nikita meanwhile unharnessed Mukhorty.  He unstrapped the
+belly-band and the back-band, took away the reins, loosened the
+collar-strap, and removed the shaft-bow, talking to him all the
+time to encourage him.
+
+'Now come out! come out!' he said, leading him clear of the
+shafts.  'Now we'll tie you up here and I'll put down some
+straw and take off your bridle.  When you've had a bite you'll
+feel more cheerful.'
+
+But Mukhorty was restless and evidently not comforted by
+Nikita's remarks.  He stepped now on one foot and now on
+another, and pressed close against the sledge, turning his back
+to the wind and rubbing his head on Nikita's sleeve.  Then, as
+if not to pain Nikita by refusing his offer of the straw he put
+before him, he hurriedly snatched a wisp out of the sledge, but
+immediately decided that it was now no time to think of straw
+and threw it down, and the wind instantly scattered it, carried
+it away, and covered it with snow.
+
+'Now we will set up a signal,' said Nikita, and turning the
+front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together
+with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge. 
+'There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the
+shafts and dig us out,' he said, slapping his mittens together
+and putting them on.  'That's what the old folk taught us!'
+
+Vasili Andreevich meanwhile had unfastened his coat, and
+holding its skirts up for shelter, struck one sulphur match
+after another on the steel box.  But his hands trembled, and
+one match after another either did not kindle or was blown out
+by the wind just as he was lifting it to the cigarette.  At
+last a match did burn up, and its flame lit up for a moment the
+fur of his coat, his hand with the gold ring on the bent
+forefinger, and the snow-sprinkled oat-straw that stuck out
+from under the drugget.  The cigarette lighted, he eagerly took
+a whiff or two, inhaled the smoke, let it out through his
+moustache, and would have inhaled again, but the wind tore off
+the burning tobacco and whirled it away as it had done the
+straw.
+
+But even these few puffs had cheered him.
+
+'If we must spend the night here, we must!' he said with
+decision.  'Wait a bit, I'll arrange a flag as well,' he added,
+picking up the kerchief which he had thrown down in the sledge
+after taking it from round his collar, and drawing off his
+gloves and standing up on the front of the sledge and
+stretching himself to reach the strap, he tied the handkerchief
+to it with a tight knot.
+
+The kerchief immediately began to flutter wildly, now clinging
+round the shaft, now suddenly streaming out, stretching and
+flapping.
+
+'Just see what a fine flag!' said Vasili Andreevich, admiring
+his handiwork and letting himself down into the sledge.  'We
+should be warmer together, but there's not room enough for
+two,' he added.
+
+'I'll find a place,' said Nikita.  'But I must cover up the
+horse first--he sweated so, poor thing.  Let go!' he added,
+drawing the drugget from under Vasili Andreevich.
+
+Having got the drugget he folded it in two, and after taking
+off the breechband and pad, covered Mukhorty with it.
+
+'Anyhow it will be warmer, silly!' he said, putting back the
+breechband and the pad on the horse over the drugget. Then
+having finished that business he returned to the sledge, and
+addressing Vasili Andreevich, said: 'You won't need the
+sackcloth, will you?  And let me have some straw.'
+
+And having taken these things from under Vasili Andreevich,
+Nikita went behind the sledge, dug out a hole for himself in
+the snow, put straw into it, wrapped his coat well round him,
+covered himself with the sackcloth, and pulling his cap well
+down seated himself on the straw he had spread, and leant
+against the wooden back of the sledge to shelter himself from
+the wind and the snow.
+
+Vasili Andreevich shook his head disapprovingly at what Nikita
+was doing, as in general he disapproved of the peasant's
+stupidity and lack of education, and he began to settle himself
+down for the night.
+
+He smoothed the remaining straw over the bottom of the sledge,
+putting more of it under his side.  Then he thrust his hands
+into his sleeves and settled down, sheltering his head in the
+corner of the sledge from the wind in front.
+
+He did not wish to sleep.  He lay and thought: thought ever of
+the one thing that constituted the sole aim, meaning, pleasure,
+and pride of his life--of how much money he had made and might
+still make, of how much other people he knew had made and
+possessed, and of how those others had made and were making it,
+and how he, like them, might still make much more.  The
+purchase of the Goryachkin grove was a matter of immense
+importance to him.  By that one deal he hoped to make perhaps
+ten thousand rubles.  He began mentally to reckon the value of
+the wood he had inspected in autumn, and on five acres of which
+he had counted all the trees.
+
+'The oaks will go for sledge-runners.  The undergrowth will
+take care of itself, and there'll still be some thirty sazheens
+of fire-wood left on each desyatin,' said he to himself.  'That
+means there will be at least two hundred and twenty-five
+rubles' worth left on each desyatin.   Fifty-six desyatiins
+means fifty-six hundreds, and  fifty-six hundreds, and
+fifty-six tens, and another fifty-six tens, and then fifty-six
+fives. . . .'  He saw that it came out to more than twelve
+thousand rubles, but could not reckon it up exactly without a
+counting-frame.  'But I won't give ten thousand, anyhow.  I'll
+give about eight thousand with a deduction on account of the
+glades.  I'll grease the surveyor's palm--give him a hundred
+rubles, or a hundred and fifty, and he'll reckon that there are
+some five desyatins of glade to be deducted.  And he'll let it
+go for eight thousand.  Three thousand cash down.  That'll move
+him, no fear!' he thought, and he pressed his pocket-book with
+his forearm.
+
+'God only knows how we missed the turning.  The forest ought to
+be there, and a watchman's hut, and dogs barking.   But the
+damned things don't bark when they're wanted.' He turned his
+collar down from his ear and listened, but as before only the
+whistling of the wind could be heard, the flapping and
+fluttering of the kerchief tied to the shafts, and the pelting
+of the snow against the woodwork of the sledge.  He again
+covered up his ear.
+
+'If I had known I would have stayed the night.  Well, no
+matter, we'll get there to-morrow.  It's only one day lost. And
+the others won't travel in such weather.'  Then he  remembered
+that on the 9th he had to receive payment from the butcher for
+his oxen.  'He meant to come himself, but he won't find me, and
+my wife won't know how to receive the money.  She doesn't know
+the right way of doing things,' he thought, recalling how at
+their party the day before she had not known how to treat the
+police-officer who was their guest.  'Of course she's only a
+woman! Where could she have seen anything?  In my father's time
+what was our house like?  Just a rich peasant's house: just an
+oatmill and an inn--that was the whole property.  But what have
+I done in these fifteen years?  A shop, two taverns, a
+flour-mill, a grain-store, two farms leased out, and a house
+with an iron-roofed barn,' he thought proudly. 'Not as it was
+in Father's time!  Who is talked of in the whole district now? 
+Brekhunov!  And why?  Because I stick to business.  I take
+trouble, not like others who lie abed or waste their time on
+foolishness while I don't sleep of nights.  Blizzard or no
+blizzard I start out.  So business gets done.  They think
+money-making is a joke.  No, take pains and rack your brains! 
+You get overtaken out of doors at night, like this, or keep
+awake night after night till the thoughts whirling in your head
+make the pillow turn,' he meditated with pride.  'They think
+people get on through luck.  After all, the Mironovs are now
+millionaires. And why?  Take pains and God gives.  If only He
+grants me health!'
+
+The thought that he might himself be a millionaire like
+Mironov, who began with nothing, so excited Vasili Andreevich
+that he felt the need of talking to somebody. But there was no
+one to talk to. . . .  If only he could have reached Goryachkin
+he would have talked to the landlord and shown him a thing or
+two.
+
+'Just see how it blows!  It will snow us up so deep that we
+shan't be able to get out in the morning!' he thought,
+listening to a gust of wind that blew against the front of the
+sledge, bending it and lashing the snow against it.  He raised
+himself and looked round.  All he could see through the
+whirling darkness was Mukhorty's dark head, his back covered by
+the fluttering drugget, and his thick knotted tail; while all
+round, in front and behind, was the same fluctuating whity
+darkness, sometimes seeming to get a little lighter and
+sometimes growing denser still.
+
+'A pity I listened to Nikita,' he thought.  'We ought to have
+driven on.  We should have come out somewhere, if only back to
+Grishkino and stayed the night at Taras's.  As it is we must
+sit here all night.  But what was I thinking about?  Yes, that
+God gives to those who take trouble, but not to loafers,
+lie-abeds, or fools.  I must have a smoke!'
+
+He sat down again, got out his cigarette-case, and stretched
+himself flat on his stomach, screening the matches with the
+skirt of his coat.  But the wind found its way in and put out
+match after match.  At last he got one to burn and lit a
+cigarette.  He was very glad that he had managed to do what he
+wanted, and though the wind smoked more of the cigarette than
+he did, he still got two or three puffs and felt more cheerful. 
+He again leant back, wrapped himself  up, started reflecting
+and remembering, and suddenly and quite unexpectedly lost
+consciousness and fell asleep.
+
+Suddenly something seemed to give him a push and awoke him. 
+Whether it was Mukhorty who had pulled some straw from under
+him, or whether something within him had startled him, at all
+events it woke him, and his heart began to beat faster and
+faster so that the sledge seemed to tremble under him.  He
+opened his eyes.  Everything around him was just as before. 
+'It looks lighter,' he thought.  'I expect it won't be long
+before dawn.'  But he at once remembered that it was lighter
+because the moon had risen.  He sat up and looked first at the
+horse.  Mukhorty still stood with his back to the wind,
+shivering all over. One side of the drugget, which was
+completely covered with snow, had been blown back, the
+breeching had slipped down and the snow-covered head with its
+waving forelock and mane were now more visible.  Vasili
+Andreevich leant over the back of the sledge and looked behind. 
+Nikita still sat in the same position in which he had settled
+himself. The sacking with which he was covered, and his legs,
+were thickly covered with snow.
+
+'If only that peasant doesn't freeze to death!  His clothes are
+so wretched.  I may be held responsible for him.  What
+shiftless people they are--such a want of education,' thought
+Vasili Andreevich, and he felt like taking the drugget off the
+horse and putting it over Nikita, but it would be very cold to
+get out and move about and, moreover, the horse might freeze to
+death.  'Why did I bring him with me?  It was all her
+stupidity!' he thought, recalling his unloved wife, and he
+rolled over into his old place at the front part of the sledge. 
+'My uncle once spent a whole night like this,' he reflected,
+'and was all right.'  But another case came at once to his
+mind.  'But when they dug Sebastian out he was dead--stiff like
+a frozen carcass.  If I'd only stopped the night in Grishkino
+all this would not have happened!'
+
+And wrapping his coat carefully round him so that none of the
+warmth of the fur should be wasted but should warm him all
+over, neck, knees, and feet, he shut his eyes and tried to
+sleep again.  But try as he would he could not get drowsy, on
+the contrary he felt wide awake and animated.   Again he began
+counting his gains and the debts due to him,  again he began
+bragging to himself and feeling pleased with  himself and his
+position, but all this was continually disturbed  by a
+stealthily approaching fear and by the unpleasant regret  that
+he had not remained in Grishkino.
+
+'How different it would be to be lying warm on a bench!'
+
+He turned over several times in his attempts to get into a more
+comfortable position more sheltered from the wind, he wrapped
+up his legs closer, shut his eyes, and lay still. But either
+his legs in their strong felt boots began to ache from being
+bent in one position, or the wind blew in somewhere,  and after
+lying still for a short time he again began to recall the
+disturbing fact that he might now have been lying quietly in
+the warm hut at Grishkino.  He again sat up, turned about,
+muffled himself up, and settled down once more.
+
+Once he fancied that he heard a distant cock-crow.  He felt
+glad, turned down his coat-collar and listened with strained
+attention, but in spite of all his efforts nothing could be
+heard but the wind whistling between the shafts, the flapping
+of the kerchief, and the snow pelting against the frame of the
+sledge.
+
+Nikita sat just as he had done all the time, not moving and not
+even answering Vasili Andreevich who had  addressed him a
+couple of times.  'He doesn't care a bit--he's probably
+asleep!' thought Vasili Andreevich with vexation, looking
+behind the sledge at Nikita who was covered with a thick layer
+of snow.
+
+Vasili Andreevich got up and lay down again some twenty times. 
+It seemed to him that the night would never end.  'It must be
+getting near morning,' he thought, getting up and looking
+around.  'Let's have a look at my watch.  It will be cold to
+unbutton, but if I only know that it's getting  near morning I
+shall at any rate feel more cheerful.  We could begin
+harnessing.'
+
+In the depth of his heart Vasili Andreevich knew that it could
+not yet be near morning, but he was growing more and more
+afraid, and wished both to get to know and yet to deceive
+himself.  He carefully undid the fastening of his sheepskin,
+pushed in his hand, and felt about for a long time before he
+got to his waistcoat.  With great difficulty he managed to draw
+out his silver watch with its enamelled  flower design, and
+tried to make out the time.  He could not see anything without
+a light.  Again he went down on his knees and elbows as he had
+done when he lighted a cigarette, got out his matches, and
+proceeded to strike one.  This time he went to work more
+carefully, and feeling with his fingers for a match with the
+largest head and the greatest amount of phosphorus, lit it at
+the first try.  Bringing the face of the watch under the light
+he could hardly believe his eyes. . . .  It was only ten
+minutes past twelve.  Almost the whole night was still before
+him.
+
+'Oh, how long the night is!' he thought, feeling a cold shudder
+run down his back, and having fastened his fur coats again and
+wrapped himself up, he snuggled into a corner of the sledge
+intending to wait patiently.  Suddenly, above the monotonous
+roar of the wind, he clearly distinguished another new and
+living sound.  It steadily strengthened, and having become
+quite clear diminished just as gradually.  Beyond all doubt it
+was a wolf, and he was so near that the movement of his jaws as
+he changed his cry was brought down the wind.  Vasili
+Andreevich turned back the collar of his coat and listened
+attentively.  Mukhorty too strained to listen, moving his ears,
+and when the wolf had ceased its howling he shifted from foot
+to foot and gave a warning snort.  After this Vasili Andreevich
+could not fall asleep again or even calm himself.  The more he
+tried to think of his accounts, his business, his reputation,
+his worth and his wealth, the more and more was he mastered by
+fear, and regrets that he had not stayed the night at Grishkino
+dominated and mingled in all his thoughts.
+
+'Devil take the forest!  Things were all right without it,
+thank God.  Ah, if we had only put up for the night!' he said
+to himself.  'They say it's drunkards that freeze,' he thought,
+'and I have had some drink.'  And observing his sensations he
+noticed that he was beginning to shiver, without knowing
+whether it was from cold or from fear.  He tried to wrap
+himself up and lie down as before, but could no longer do so. 
+He could not stay in one position.  He wanted to get up, to do
+something to master the gathering fear that was rising in him
+and against which he felt himself powerless.  He again got out
+his cigarettes and matches, but only three matches were left
+and they were bad ones. The phosphorus rubbed off them all
+without lighting.
+
+'The devil take you!  Damned thing!  Curse you!' he  muttered,
+not knowing whom or what he was cursing, and he flung away the
+crushed cigarette.  He was about to throw away the matchbox
+too, but checked the movement of his hand and put the box in
+his pocket instead.  He was seized with such unrest that he
+could no longer remain in one spot.  He climbed out of the
+sledge and standing with his back to the wind began to shift
+his belt again, fastening it lower down in the waist and
+tightening it.
+
+'What's the use of lying and waiting for death?  Better mount
+the horse and get away!'  The thought suddenly occurred  to
+him.  'The horse will move when he has someone on his back.  
+As for him,' he thought of Nikita--'it's all the same to him
+whether he lives or dies.  What is his life worth?  He won't
+grudge his life, but I have something to live for, thank God.'
+
+He untied the horse, threw the reins over his neck and tried to
+mount, but his coats and boots were so heavy that he failed. 
+Then he clambered up in the sledge and tried to mount from
+there, but the sledge tilted under his weight, and he failed
+again.  At last he drew Mukhorty nearer to the sledge,
+cautiously balanced on one side of it, and managed  to lie on
+his stomach across the horse's back.  After lying like that for
+a while he shifted forward once and again, threw a leg over,
+and finally seated himself,  supporting his feet on the loose
+breeching-straps.  The shaking of the sledge awoke Nikita.  He
+raised himself, and it seemed to Vasili Andreevich that he said
+something.
+
+'Listen to such fools as you!  Am I to die like this for
+nothing?' exclaimed Vasili Andreevich.  And tucking the loose
+skirts of his fur coat in under his knees, he turned the horse
+and rode away from the sledge in the direction in  which he
+thought the forest and the forester's hut must be.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+From the time he had covered himself with the sackcloth and
+seated himself behind the sledge, Nikita had not stirred.  Like
+all those who live in touch with nature and have known want, he
+was patient and could wait for hours, even days, without
+growing restless or irritable.  He heard his master call him,
+but did not answer because he did not want to move or talk. 
+Though he still felt some warmth from the tea he had drunk and
+from his energetic struggle when clambering about in the
+snowdrift, he knew that this warmth would not last long and
+that he had no strength left to warm himself again by moving
+about, for he felt as tired as a horse when it stops and
+refuses to go further in spite of the whip, and its master sees
+that it must be fed before it can work again.  The foot in the
+boot with a hole in it had already grown numb, and he could no
+longer feel his big toe.  Besides that, his whole body began to
+feel colder and colder.
+
+The thought that he might, and very probably would, die that
+night occurred to him, but did not seem particularly unpleasant
+or dreadful.  It did not seem particularly unpleasant, because
+his whole life had been not a continual holiday, but on the
+contrary an unceasing round of toil of which he was beginning
+to feel weary.  And it did not seem particularly dreadful,
+because besides the masters he had served here, like Vasili
+Andreevich, he always felt himself dependent on the Chief
+Master, who had sent him into this life, and he knew that when
+dying he would still be in that Master's power and would not be
+ill-used by Him.  'It seems a pity to give up what one is used
+to and accustomed  to.  But there's nothing to be done, I shall
+get used to the new things.'
+
+'Sins?' he thought, and remembered his drunkenness, the money
+that had gone on drink, how he had offended his wife, his
+cursing, his neglect of church and of the fasts, and all the
+things the priest blamed him for at confession. 'Of course they
+are sins.  But then, did I take them on of myself?  That's
+evidently how God made me.  Well, and the sins?  Where am I to
+escape to?'
+
+So at first he thought of what might happen to him that night,
+and then did not return to such thoughts but gave himself up to
+whatever recollections came into his head of themselves.  Now
+he thought of Martha's arrival, of the drunkenness among the
+workers and his own renunciation of drink, then of their
+present journey and of Taras's house and the talk about the
+breaking-up of the family, then of his own lad, and of Mukhorty
+now sheltered under the drugget, and then of his master who
+made the sledge creak as he tossed about in it.  'I expect
+you're sorry  yourself that you started out, dear man,' he
+thought.  'It would seem hard to leave a life such as his! 
+It's not like the likes of us.'
+
+Then all these recollections began to grow confused and got
+mixed in his head, and he fell asleep.
+
+But when Vasili Andreevich, getting on the horse, jerked the
+sledge, against the back of which Nikita was leaning, and it
+shifted away and hit him in the back with one of its runners,
+he awoke and had to change his position whether he liked it or
+not.  Straightening his legs with difficulty and shaking the
+snow off them he got up, and an agonizing cold immediately
+penetrated his whole body.  On making out what was happening he
+called to Vasili Andreevich to leave him the drugget which the
+horse no longer needed, so that he might wrap himself in it.
+
+But Vasili Andreevich did not stop, but disappeared amid the
+powdery snow.
+
+Left alone Nikita considered for a moment what he should do. 
+He felt that he had not the strength to go off in search of a
+house.  It was no longer possible to sit down in his old
+place--it was by now all filled with snow.  He felt that he
+could not get warmer in the sledge either, for there was
+nothing to cover himself with, and his coat and sheepskin no
+longer warmed him at all.  He felt as cold as though he had
+nothing on but a shirt.  He became frightened. 'Lord, heavenly
+Father!' he muttered, and was comforted by the consciousness
+that he was not alone but that there was One who heard him and
+would not abandon him.  He gave a deep sigh, and keeping the
+sackcloth over his head he got inside the sledge and lay down
+in the place where his master had been.
+
+But he could not get warm in the sledge either.  At first he
+shivered all over, then the shivering ceased and little by
+little he began to lose consciousness.  He did not know whether
+he was dying or falling asleep, but felt equally prepared for
+the one as for the other.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Meanwhile Vasili Andreevich, with his feet and the ends of the
+reins, urged the horse on in the direction in which for some
+reason he expected the forest and forester's hut to be.  The
+snow covered his eyes and the wind seemed intent on stopping
+him, but bending forward and constantly lapping his coat over
+and pushing it between himself and the cold harness pad which
+prevented him from sitting properly, he kept urging the horse
+on.  Mukhorty ambled on obediently though with difficulty, in
+the direction in which he was driven.
+
+Vasili Andreevich rode for about five minutes straight ahead,
+as he thought, seeing nothing but the horse's head and the
+white waste, and hearing only the whistle of the wind about the
+horse's ears and his coat collar.
+
+Suddenly a dark patch showed up in front of him.  His heart
+beat with joy, and he rode towards the object,  already seeing
+in imagination the walls of village houses. But the dark patch
+was not stationary, it kept moving; and it was not a village
+but some tall stalks of wormwood sticking up through the snow
+on the boundary between two fields, and desperately tossing
+about under the pressure of the wind which beat it all to one
+side and whistled through it.  The sight of that wormwood
+tormented by the pitiless wind made Vasili Andreevich shudder,
+he knew not why, and he hurriedly began urging the horse on,
+not noticing that when riding up to the wormwood he had quite
+changed his direction and was now heading the  opposite way,
+though still imagining that he was riding  towards where the
+hut should be.  But the horse kept making towards the right,
+and Vasili Andreevich kept guiding it to the left.
+
+Again something dark appeared in front of him.  Again he
+rejoiced, convinced that now it was certainly a village. But
+once more it was the same boundary line overgrown with
+wormwood, once more the same wormwood desperately  tossed by
+the wind and carrying unreasoning terror to his heart.  But its
+being the same wormwood was not all, for beside is* there was a
+horse's track partly snowed over. Vasili Andreevich stopped,
+stooped down and looked carefully.  It was a horse-track only
+partially covered with snow, and could be none but his own
+horse's hoofprints. He had evidently gone round in a small
+circle.  'I shall perish like that!' he thought, and not to
+give way to his terror he urged on the horse still more,
+peering into the snowy darkness in which he saw only flitting
+and fitful points of light.  Once he thought he heard the
+barking of dogs or the howling of wolves, but the sounds were
+so faint and indistinct that he did not know whether he heard
+them or merely imagined them, and he stopped and began to
+listen intently.
+
+Suddenly some terrible, deafening cry resounded near his ears,
+and everything shivered and shook under him.  He seized
+Mukhorty's neck, but that too was shaking all over and the
+terrible cry grew still more frightful.  For some seconds
+Vasili Andreevich could not collect himself or understand what
+was happening.  It was only that Mukhorty, whether to encourage
+himself or to call for  help, had neighed loudly and
+resonantly.  'Ugh, you wretch! How you frightened me, damn
+you!' thought Vasili Andreevich.  But even when he understood
+the cause of his terror he could not shake it off.
+
+'I must calm myself and think things over,' he said to himself,
+but yet he could not stop, and continued to urge the horse on,
+without noticing that he was now going with the wind instead of
+against it.  His body, especially between his legs where it
+touched the pad of the harness and was not covered by his
+overcoats, was getting painfully cold, especially when the
+horse walked slowly.  His legs and arms trembled and his
+breathing came fast.  He saw himself perishing amid this
+dreadful snowy waste, and could see no means of escape.
+
+Suddenly the horse under him tumbled into something and,
+sinking into a snow-drift, began to plunge and fell on his
+side.  Vasili Andreevich jumped off, and in so doing dragged to
+one side the breechband on which his foot was resting, and
+twisted round the pad to which he held as he dismounted.  As
+soon as he had jumped off, the horse struggled to his feet,
+plunged forward, gave one leap and another, neighed again, and
+dragging the drugget and the breechband after him, disappeared,
+leaving Vasili Andreevich alone on the snow-drift.
+
+The latter pressed on after the horse, but the snow lay so deep
+and his coats were so heavy that, sinking above his knees at
+each step, he stopped breathless after taking not more than
+twenty steps.  'The copse, the oxen, the lease-hold,  the shop,
+the tavern, the house with the iron-roofed barn, and my heir,'
+thought he.  'How can I leave all that? What does this mean? 
+It cannot be!'  These thoughts flashed through his mind.  Then
+he thought of the wormwood tossed by the wind, which he had
+twice ridden past, and he was seized with such terror that he
+did not believe in the reality of what was happening to him. 
+'Can this be a dream?' he thought, and tried to wake up but
+could not. It was real snow that lashed his face and covered
+him and chilled his right hand from which he had lost the
+glove, and this was a real desert in which he was now left
+alone like that wormwood, awaiting an inevitable, speedy, and
+meaningless death.
+
+'Queen of Heaven!  Holy Father Nicholas, teacher of
+temperance!' he thought, recalling the service of the day
+before and the holy icon with its black face and gilt frame,
+and the tapers which he sold to be set before that icon and
+which were almost immediately brought back to him scarcely 
+burnt at all, and which he put away in the store-chest.  He 
+began to pray to that same Nicholas the Wonder-Worker to  save
+him, promising him a thanksgiving service and some candles. 
+But he clearly and indubitably realized that the icon, its
+frame, the candles, the priest, and the thanksgiving service,
+though very important and necessary in church, could do nothing
+for him here, and that there was and could be no connexion
+between those candles and services and his present disastrous
+plight.  'I must not despair,' he thought.  'I must follow the
+horse's track before  it is snowed under.  He will lead me out,
+or I may even catch him.  Only I must not hurry, or I shall
+stick fast and be more lost than ever.'
+
+But in spite of his resolution to go quietly, he rushed forward
+and even ran, continually falling, getting up and falling
+again.  The horse's track was already hardly visible in places
+where the snow did not lie deep.  'I am lost!' thought Vasili
+Andreevich.  'I shall lose the track and not catch the horse.' 
+But at that moment he saw something black.  It was Mukhorty,
+and not only Mukhorty, but the sledge with the shafts and the
+kerchief.  Mukhorty, with the sacking and the breechband
+twisted round to one side, was standing not in his former place
+but nearer to the shafts, shaking his head which the reins he
+was stepping on drew downwards.  It turned out that Vasili
+Andreevich had sunk in the same ravine Nikita had previously
+fallen into, and that Mukhorty had been bringing him back to
+the sledge and he had got off his back no more than fifty paces
+from where the sledge was.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Having stumbled back to the sledge Vasili Andreevich caught
+hold of it and for a long time stood motionless, trying to calm
+himself and recover his breath.  Nikita was not in his former
+place, but something, already covered with snow, was lying in
+the sledge and Vasili Andreevich concluded that this was
+Nikita.  His terror had now quite left him, and if he felt any
+fear it was lest the dreadful terror should return that he had
+experienced when on the horse and especially when he was left
+alone in the snow-drift.  At any cost he had to avoid that
+terror, and to keep it away he must do something--occupy
+himself with something.  And the first thing he did was to turn
+his back to the wind and open his fur coat.  Then, as soon as
+he recovered his breath a little, he shook the snow out of his
+boots and out of his left-hand glove (the right-hand glove was
+hopelessly lost and by this time probably lying somewhere under
+a dozen inches of snow); then as was his custom when going out
+of his shop to buy grain from the peasants, he pulled his
+girdle low down and tightened it and prepared for action.  The
+first thing that occurred to him was to free Mukhorty's leg
+from the rein.  Having done that, and tethered him to the iron
+cramp at the front of the sledge where he had been before, he
+was going round the horse's quarters to put the breechband and
+pad straight and cover him with the cloth, but at that moment
+he noticed that something was moving in the sledge and Nikita's
+head rose up out of the snow that covered it.  Nikita, who was
+half frozen, rose with great difficulty and sat up, moving his
+hand before his nose in a strange manner just as if he were
+driving away flies.  He waved his hand and said something, and
+seemed to Vasili Andreevich to be calling him.  Vasili
+Andreevich left the cloth unadjusted and went up to the sledge.
+
+'What is it?' he asked.  'What are you saying?'
+
+'I'm dy . . . ing, that's what,' said Nikita brokenly and with
+difficulty.  'Give what is owing to me to my lad, or to my
+wife, no matter.'
+
+'Why, are you really frozen?' asked Vasili Andreevich.
+
+'I feel it's my death.  Forgive me for Christ's sake . . .'
+said Nikita in a tearful voice, continuing to wave his hand
+before his face as if driving away flies.
+
+Vasili Andreevich stood silent and motionless for half a
+minute.  Then suddenly, with the same resolution with which he
+used to strike hands when making a good purchase, he took a
+step back and turning up his sleeves began raking the snow off
+Nikita and out of the sledge.  Having done this he hurriedly
+undid his girdle, opened out his fur coat, and having pushed
+Nikita down, lay down on top of him, covering him not only with
+his fur coat but with the whole of his body, which glowed with
+warmth.  After pushing the skirts of his coat between Nikita
+and the sides of the sledge, and holding down its hem with his
+knees, Vasili Andreevich lay like that face down, with his head
+pressed against the front of the sledge.  Here he no longer
+heard the horse's movements or the whistling of the wind, but
+only Nikita's breathing.  At first and for a long time Nikita
+lay motionless, then he sighed deeply and moved.
+
+'There, and you say you are dying!  Lie still and get warm,
+that's our way . . .' began Vasili Andreevich.
+
+But to his great surprise he could say no more, for tears came
+to his eyes and his lower jaw began to quiver rapidly. He
+stopped speaking and only gulped down the risings in his
+throat.  'Seems I was badly frightened and have gone quite
+weak,' he thought.  But this weakness was not only unpleasant,
+but gave him a peculiar joy such as he had never felt before.
+
+'That's our way!' he said to himself, experiencing a strange
+and solemn tenderness.  He lay like that for a long time,
+wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat and tucking under his
+knee the right skirt, which the wind kept turning up.
+
+But he longed so passionately to tell somebody of his joyful
+condition that he said: 'Nikita!'
+
+'It's comfortable, warm!' came a voice from beneath.
+
+'There, you see, friend, I was going to perish.  And you would
+have been frozen, and I should have . . .'
+
+But again his jaws began to quiver and his eyes to fill with
+tears, and he could say no more.
+
+'Well, never mind,' he thought.  'I know about myself what I
+know.'
+
+He remained silent and lay like that for a long time.
+
+Nikita kept him warm from below and his fur coats from above. 
+Only his hands, with which he kept his coat-skirts down round
+Nikita's sides, and his legs which the wind kept uncovering,
+began to freeze, especially his right hand which had no glove. 
+But he did not think of his legs or of his hands but only of
+how to warm the peasant who was lying under him.  He looked out
+several times at Mukhorty and could see that his back was
+uncovered and the drugget and breeching lying on the snow, and
+that he ought to get up and cover him, but he could not bring
+himself to leave Nikita and disturb even for a moment the
+joyous condition he was in.  He no longer felt any kind of
+terror.
+
+'No fear, we shan't lose him this time!' he said to himself,
+referring to his getting the peasant warm with the same
+boastfulness with which he spoke of his buying and selling.
+
+Vasili Andreevich lay in that way for one hour, another, and a
+third, but he was unconscious of the passage of time.  At first
+impressions of the snow-storm, the sledge-shafts, and the horse
+with the shaft-bow shaking before his eyes, kept passing
+through his mind, then he remembered Nikita lying under him,
+then recollections of the festival, his wife, the
+police-officer, and the box of candles, began to mingle with
+these; then again Nikita, this time lying under that box, then
+the peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his
+house with its iron roof with Nikita  lying underneath,
+presented themselves to his imagination. Afterwards all these
+impressions blended into one nothingness.   As the colours of
+the rainbow unite into one white light, so all these different
+impressions mingled into one, and he fell asleep.
+
+For a long time he slept without dreaming, but just before dawn
+the visions recommenced.  It seemed to him that he was standing
+by the box of tapers and that Tikhon's wife was asking for a
+five kopek taper for the Church fete. He wished to take one out
+and give it to her, but his hands would not life, being held
+tight in his pockets.  He wanted to walk round the box but his
+feet would not move and his new clean goloshes had grown to the
+stone floor, and he could neither lift them nor get his feet
+out of the goloshes.  Then the taper-box was no longer a box
+but a bed, and suddenly Vasili Andreevich saw himself lying in
+his bed at home.  He was lying in his bed and could not get up. 
+Yet it was necessary for him to get up because Ivan Matveich,
+the police-officer, would soon call for him and he had to go
+with him--either to bargain for the  forest or to put
+Mukhorty's breeching straight.
+
+He asked his wife: 'Nikolaevna, hasn't he come yet?' 'No, he
+hasn't,' she replied.  He heard someone drive up to the front
+steps.  'It must be him.'  'No, he's gone past.' 'Nikolaevna! 
+I say, Nikolaevna, isn't he here yet?'  'No.'  He was still
+lying on his bed and could not get up, but was always waiting. 
+And this waiting was uncanny and yet joyful.  Then suddenly his
+joy was completed.  He whom he was expecting came; not Ivan
+Matveich the  police-officer, but someone else--yet it was he
+whom he had been waiting for.  He came and called him; and it
+was he who had called him and told him to lie down on Nikita.
+And Vasili Andreevich was glad that that one had come for him.
+
+'I'm coming!' he cried joyfully, and that cry awoke him, but
+woke him up not at all the same person he had been when he fell
+asleep.  He tried to get up but could not, tried to move his
+arm and could not, to move his leg and also could not, to turn
+his head and could not.  He was surprised  but not at all
+disturbed by this.  He understood that this was death, and was
+not at all disturbed by that either.
+
+He remembered that Nikita was lying under him and that he had
+got warm and was alive, and it seemed to him that he was Nikita
+and Nikita was he, and that his life was not in himself but in
+Nikita.  He strained his ears and heard Nikita breathing and
+even slightly snoring.  'Nikita is alive, so I too am alive!'
+he said to himself triumphantly.
+
+And he remembered his money, his shop, his house, the buying
+and selling, and Mironov's millions, and it was hard for him to
+understand why that man, called Vasili Brekhunov, had troubled
+himself with all those things with which he had been troubled.
+
+'Well, it was because he did not know what the real thing was,'
+he thought, concerning that Vasili Brekhunov.  'He did not
+know, but now I know and know for sure. Now I know!'  And again
+he heard the voice of the one who had called him before.  'I'm
+coming!  Coming!' he responded gladly, and his whole being was
+filled with joyful emotion.  He felt himself free and that
+nothing could hold him back any longer.
+
+After that Vasili Andreevich neither saw, heard, nor felt
+anything more in this world.
+
+All around the snow still eddied.  The same whirlwinds of snow
+circled about, covering the dead Vasili Andreevich's fur coat,
+the shivering Mukhorty, the sledge, now scarcely to be seen,
+and Nikita lying at the bottom of it, kept warm beneath his
+dead master.
+
+
+
+X
+
+Nikita awoke before daybreak.  He was aroused by the cold that
+had begun to creep down his back.  He had dreamt that he was
+coming from the mill with a load of his master's flour and when
+crossing the stream had missed the bridge and let the cart get
+stuck.  And he saw that he had crawled under the cart and was
+trying to lift it by arching his back.  But strange to say the
+cart did not move, it stuck to his back and he could neither
+lift it nor get out from under it.  It was crushing the whole
+of his loins.  And how cold it felt!  Evidently he must crawl
+out.  'Have done!' he exclaimed to whoever was pressing the
+cart down on him.  'Take out the sacks!'  But the cart pressed
+down colder and colder, and then he heard a strange knocking,
+awoke completely, and remembered everything.  The cold cart was
+his dead and frozen master lying upon him.  And the knock was
+produced by Mukhorty, who had twice struck the sledge with his
+hoof.
+
+'Andreevich!  Eh, Andreevich!'  Nikita called cautiously,
+beginning to realize the truth, and straightening his back. 
+But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and his stomach and legs
+were stiff and cold and heavy like iron weights.
+
+'He must have died!  May the Kingdom of Heaven be his!' thought
+Nikita.
+
+He turned his head, dug with his hand through the snow about
+him and opened his eyes.  It was daylight; the wind was
+whistling as before between the shafts, and the snow was
+falling in the same way, except that it was no longer driving
+against the frame of the sledge but silently covered both
+sledge and horse deeper and deeper, and neither the horse's
+movements nor his breathing were any longer to be heard.
+
+'He must have frozen too,' thought Nikita of Mukhorty, and
+indeed those hoof knocks against the sledge, which had awakened
+Nikita, were the last efforts the already numbed Mukhorty had
+made to keep on his feet before dying.
+
+'O Lord God, it seems Thou art calling me too!' said Nikita. 
+'Thy Holy Will be done.  But it's uncanny. . . . Still, a man
+can't die twice and must die once.  If only it would come
+soon!'
+
+And he again drew in his head, closed his eyes, and  became
+unconscious, fully convinced that now he was certainly  and
+finally dying.
+
+
+It was not till noon that day that peasants dug Vasili
+Andreevich and Nikita out of the snow with their shovels, not
+more than seventy yards from the road and less than half a mile
+from the village.
+
+The snow had hidden the sledge, but the shafts and the kerchief
+tied to them were still visible.  Mukhorty, buried up to his
+belly in snow, with the breeching and drugget hanging down,
+stood all white, his dead head pressed against his frozen
+throat: icicles hung from his nostrils, his eyes were covered
+with hoar-frost as though filled with tears, and he had grown
+so thin in that one night that he was nothing but skin and
+bone.
+
+Vasili Andreevich was stiff as a frozen carcass, and when they
+rolled him off Nikita his legs remained apart and his arms
+stretched out as they had been.  His bulging hawk eyes were
+frozen, and his open mouth under his clipped moustache was full
+of snow.  But Nikita though chilled through was still alive. 
+When he had been brought to, he felt sure that he was already
+dead and that what was taking  place with him was no longer
+happening in this world but in the next.  When he heard the
+peasants shouting as they dug him out and rolled the frozen
+body of Vasili Andreevich from off him, he was at first
+surprised that in the other world peasants should be shouting
+in the same old way and had the same kind of body, and then
+when he realized that he was still in this world he was sorry
+rather than glad, especially when he found that the toes on
+both his feet were frozen.
+
+Nikita lay in hospital for two months.  They cut off three of
+his toes, but the others recovered so that he was still able to
+work and went on living for another twenty years, first as a
+farm-labourer, then in his old age as a watchman. He died at
+home as he had wished, only this year, under the icons with a
+lighted taper in his hands.  Before he died he asked his wife's
+forgiveness and forgave her for the cooper.  He also took leave
+of his son and grandchildren, and died sincerely glad that he
+was relieving his son and daughter-in-law of the burden of
+having to feed him, and that he was now really passing from
+this life of which he was weary into that other life which
+every year and every hour grew clearer and more desirable to
+him.  Whether he is better or worse off there where he awoke
+after his death, whether he was disappointed or found there
+what he expected,  we shall all soon learn.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy
+
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