Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/105

Rh stood out all the more plainly, with its fluttering mane. Nikita was sitting in precisely the same position in which he had sat at first. The coarse cloth or apron with which he had covered himself, together with his feet, were thickly covered with snow. "I wonder the muzhik isn't frozen with only those wretched rags on him. I am responsible for him still, I suppose. He's tired with skipping about; he's not a very good investment for me, either, I fancy," reflected Vasily Andreich, and he would liked to have taken the sack off the horse and covered Nikita with it; but it would have made him cold all over to have stood up and turned round, and then he was afraid that the horse might get frozen instead. "Why did I ever take him? It is all her stupidity!" reflected Vasily Andreich, thinking of his wife, and again he rolled himself up comfortably in his former place in the front part of the sledge. "Besides, an uncle of mine once passed a whole night in the snow, and was none the worse for it," he reflected. "But then there was Sebastian, whom they dug up"—recalling another case—"he was quite dead, frozen hard all over, like a salted porpoise."

"I ought to have stayed the night at Grishkino, and nothing would have happened." And very carefully wrapping himself up again, so that not a bit of the warm furs was wasted, and he could feel the warmth of them everywhere—in his neck, in his knees, and in the soles of his feet, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But try as he would he could not forget where he was, such a wakeful, lively feeling possessed him. Again he began calculating his 55