Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/110

Tales from Tolstoi swerved aside under his weight, and again he fell down. At last, for the third time, he brought the horse alongside the sledge, and cautiously standing on the edge of it, by dint of much striving contrived at last to get his stomach across the neck of the horse. Lying there, he wriggled forward once or twice, and at last succeeded in bringing one leg across the back of the horse, and presently found himself sitting on its back, supporting himself in lieu of stirrups with the soles of his feet. The lurch of the oscillating sledge awoke Nikita; he stood up, and it seemed to Vasily Andreich as if he were saying something.

"To listen to you would be folly. What! do you think that I'm going to perish without one effort?" screeched Vasily Andreich, and adjusting under his knees the bulging folds of his pelisse, he turned the horse, and urged it away from the sledge in the direction in which he imagined the forest and the forester's hut must needs be.

Nikita, from the time when he had sat him down wrapped up in the sacking at the back of the sledge, had sat immovable. Like all people who live naturally, and know something of want, he had grown to be long-suffering, and could wait calmly for hours, and even days, without experiencing either disquietude or irritation. He heard his master calling to him, but he did not reply, because he did not want to move. 60