Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/49

Rh distance they had covered, to have been walking a week. They had left so many ravines and hills behind them, so many rivers and lakes, so many forests and plains! Whenever Makar looked back, the dark taiga seemed to be running away behind them and the high, snowclad mountains seemed to be melting into the murky night and hiding swiftly behind the horizon.

They appeared to be climbing higher and higher. The stars grew larger and brighter; from the crest of the height to which they had risen they could see the rim of the setting moon. It seemed to have been in haste to escape, but Makar and the priest had overtaken it. Then it rose again over the horizon, and the travellers found themselves on a level, very high plain. It was light now, much lighter than early in the night, and this was due, of course, to the fact that they were much nearer the stars than they had been before. Each one of these, in size like an apple, glittered with ineffable brightness; the moon, as large as a huge barrel-head, blazed with the brilliance of the sun, lighting up the vast expanse from one edge to the other.

Every snowflake on the plain was sharply discernible, and countless paths stretched across it, all converging toward the same point in the east. Men of various aspects and in many different garbs were walking and riding along these roads.