Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/297

 Rh "But where is my priest—my companion?"

"Don't know, Bachka."

"How are we to find him?"

"Don't know, Bachka."

"Perhaps he has been frozen."

"Why should he be frozen? There's snow, he won't freeze."

I remembered that Kiriak had the bottle with warming drink, and the basket of provisions, and was reassured. I had nothing of the sort with me, and now I would gladly have eaten even the dogs' dried fish; but I was afraid to ask for it, because I was not sure if we had any.

All day long we seemed to be going round and round at random; I saw it, if not by the passionless face of my driver, by the restless, irregular and troubled movements of his dogs, which seemed to be jumping about, fidgeting, and always throwing themselves from side to side. My savage had much trouble with them, but his unchanging passionless indifference did not desert him for a moment; he only seemed to work with his long stick with greater attention, without which on this day we should have been thrown out at least a hundred times, and left either in the middle of the wilderness or else by the woods which we were constantly skirting.

Suddenly one of the dogs stuck its muzzle