Page:Russian sketches, chiefly of peasant life.djvu/20

4 muddy earthen floor people were lying everywhere. The landlord, a rough peasant, was not pleased either with his guests or his gains. He angrily slammed the door after the last arrivals, two merchants in a sledge; he then locked the door and, hanging up the key in the corner of the hut where the icons hung said decidedly:

"Now whoever you are who wish to come in you may beat your head against the door but I shall not open." He had hardly finished saying this and having taken off his ample sheepskin pelisse and crossed himself with the ancient great cross, he was prepared to slip on to the hot stove, when a timid hand knocked on the window. "Who is there?" cried the landlord in a loud, impatient voice.

"We," was answered in a muffled tone through the window.

"Well, and what do you want?"

"For Christ's sake let us in; we have lost our way and are frozen."

"And how many are you?"

"Not many, not many; we are eighteen in all," said the speaker at the window, stammering and with his teeth chattering; evidently a man thoroughly frozen.