Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/369

Rh heavy cloth. It was seven feet square, and something like a dozen skins were required for making it. At one end it was shaped into a sort of bag for receiving the feet."

Fred suggested that such a costume must be very inconvenient for walking, and it must be no easy matter to enter and leave a sleigh when thus wrapped for a cold night.

"You are quite right," said Mr. Hegeman; "it is the work of a minute or more to turn over at night and change one's position, excepting, of course, when the sleigh turns over first."

"Did that happen often?"

"Fortunately not," was the reply, "but the few experiences of this kind that I had were quite sufficient. One night we were upset while

at full speed down a hill. I was asleep at the time, and without the least warning found myself in a mass of baggage, hay, furs, and snow. My first thought was that an earthquake had hit us, and it was several seconds before I realized what had happened. One of the horses broke loose and ran away; the driver mounted the other and went after the fugitive, and for half an hour my companion and myself were left alone with the sleigh and its contents. We kept ourselves busy trying to get things to rights, and as we had only the light of the stars to work by, we did not get along rapidly.

"We found one of the shafts and also a fender broken; otherwise the vehicle had suffered no material damage. But I'm getting ahead of the story.