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More Tales from Tolstoi "But I say it is not. I tell you I've just seen it," answered Ignat angrily.

"Ah, my brother, and you a driver too!"

"Driver be hanged! Go yourself!"

"Why should I go when I know already?"

It was plain that Ignat was very angry. Without answering, he leaped upon the box-seat and drove on further.

"You see how your feet grow numb if you don't warm them a bit," he said to Alec, continuing to hug his arms more and more frequently and wipe and shake off the snow which kept pouring into the leg of his boot.

I had a frightful desire to go to sleep.

"Can it be possible that I am already freezing to death?" I thought in the midst of my slumbers. Freezing to death always begins during slumber, they say. Why, it would be better to be drowned than to freeze and let myself be drawn out in a net, yet 'tis all one whether I drown or freeze if only this stick—it seems to be a stick—were not beating against my back and I could lose consciousness.

And for a second or so I did lose consciousness.

"Yet, how will all this end?" I suddenly said within my mind, opening my eyes for a moment and glancing at the white expanse; "how will all this end if we do not find the ricks and the horses stop, which will happen pretty soon? We shall all be frozen." I confess that although a little afraid, the wish that