Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/33

Rh him a piece of roast meat, and he never failed to collect a debt of this kind.

Another hour found him seated once more in his sled, having made one whole rouble by selling five loads of wood in advance on fairly good terms. Now, although he had vowed and sworn not to drink up the money until to-morrow, he nevertheless made up his mind to do so without delay. What odds? The pleasure ahead silenced the voice of his conscience; he even forgot the cruel drubbing in store for his drunken self from his wife, the faithful and the deceived.

"Where are you going, Makar?" called the stranger laughing, as Makar's horse, instead of going straight ahead, turned off to the left in the direction of the Tartar settlement.

"Whoa! Whoa! Will you look where the brute is going?" cried Makar to exculpate himself, tugging hard at the left rein nevertheless and slyly slapping his pony's side with the right.

The clever little horse stumbled patiently away in the direction required by his master, and the scraping of the runners soon stopped in front of a Tartar house.

At the gate stood several horses with high-peaked Yakut saddles on their backs.

The air in the crowded hut was stifling and hot; a dense cloud of acrid mahorka smoke hung in the