Chapter 6 - Page 2

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