Chapter 9 - Page 2

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