Chapter 8 - Page 2

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