Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/114

Tales from Tolstoi his hands—to go on taking care of other people's horses, to go on carrying other people's corn to the mill, and loafing about generally, so as thereby to earn more money to give to his wife, why then. His Holy Will be done. Or if God bade him wake up in that other world, where everything would be so new and joyful, just as things are all so new and joyful here below in our first childhood, with our mother's caresses, and the games with other children, and the pleasant woods and meadows, and skating and sliding in the winter, so that there's nothing ever like it afterwards—if God bade him wake up in that other life where all is new—then likewise. His Holy Will be done! And then Nikita lost consciousness altogether.

Meanwhile Vasily Andreich with his feet and the ends of the reins was urging on the horse in the direction where, somehow or other, he had persuaded himself lay the forest and the forester's hut. The snow blinded his eyes, and the wind seemed to wish to stop him; but still he pressed forward, perpetually seizing the folds of his pelisse, and thrusting them between himself and the cold brass bosses of the saddle, which prevented him from sitting properly, yet never ceasing to urge on the horse. The horse, not without difficulty, yet doggedly, continued to go at a foot-pace in the direction whither he was guided.

For five minutes he went, as he fancied, quite 64