Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/104

Tales from Tolstoi with, and yet I am neither a loafer nor a vagabond, nor yet a blockhead. Never mind, I'll smoke a bit." So he sat down, managed to fish out his cigarette box again, lay down flat on his stomach, and shielded the fire from the wind with his sleeve; yet the wind found its way in and extinguished the matches one after the other. At last he cunningly managed to dodge the wind. The cigarette was lit, and the idea of having got his own way again, after all, pleased him mightily. Although the wind got much more of the cigarette than he did, he nevertheless inhaled the tobacco smoke several times, and again felt merry. He again curled himself away in the back part of the sledge, wrapped himself up, and again began calculating and reflecting, and so he fell asleep. Suddenly something or other touched him and woke him. Whether it was Brownie that plucked at him from without, or whether something within him had twitched him, who shall say—anyhow he awoke, and his heart fell a-beating so rapidly and so violently that the very sledge seemed to be surging up and down beneath him. He opened his eyes. Around him everything was the same as before, only it seemed much lighter. "It is the dawn," thought he, "it won't be very long now, surely, till morning." But immediately he bethought him that it could only be because the moon had risen that it was so much brighter. He raised himself up and looked first of all at the horse. Brownie was standing with his hind-quarters to the wind and shaking all over. The large sack, covered with snow, had half turned over, the harness was all awry, and the horse's head, all covered with snow, 54