Master and Man | Page 9

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