Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/69

Rh storm, in the midst of the barren steppe, has always remained unintelligible to me. The little old man, moving his elbows and legs, rode up at a gallop on the brown horse. The two other horses were attached to the collar: in the snowstorm it was impossible to leave the horses to themselves. On coming up to his, the old fellow began attacking my driver again.

"Look here, you cock-eyed devil, really if …"

"Hie, Uncle Matvich!" shouted the tale-teller from the second sledge, "alive, eh? Crawl in here!" But the old man did not answer him, but went on with his cursing. When it appeared to him that he had cursed enough, he did go to the second sledge.

" Caught 'em all?" they said to him from that quarter.

"Of course! Why not?"

And his diminutive figure, on the trot, with the upper part of his body bobbing up and down on the back of the horse, after leaping out on to the snow, ran forward without stopping behind the sledge, and scrambled in to where they were, with his legs sticking up in the air as he forced his way through the orifice. Tall Vas-il-y, as before, took his seat in silence on the box seat in the foremost sledge alongside Ignashka, whom he helped to look for the road.

"You see what a curser he is, my little master!" murmured my driver.

We went along for some time after this, without stopping, over the white wilderness, in the cold, transparent, and quivering light of the snowstorm. Every time I opened my eyes, there in front of me was the