Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/120

Tales from Tolstoi feeling of terror he had experienced on horseback, and also and especially when he had been left all alone in the pit. He must, above all things, prevent this terror from getting at him again; and for that reason he felt he must think no more about himself, but think of someone else, and above all do something. And therefore the first thing he did was this: he stood with his back to the wind and unbuttoned his pelisse. After that, when he had recovered his breath a little, he shook the snow out of his boots and gloves, girded himself tightly and low down, as he was wont to do when he went forth from his store to buy bread from the wagons of the itinerant muzhiks, and prepared for work. The first thing which it occurred to him to do was to free the legs of the horse from the harness. This, then, Vasily Andreich proceeded to do, and having freed the horse, he tied Brownie again to the iron hook in front of the sledge, in the old place, and then went round to the other side of the horse to set right the saddle, bridle, and sacking coverlet. But at that moment he observed something beginning to move in the sledge under its layer of snow, and the head of Nikita peeped up. Obviously only with great exertion, the muzhik rose up into a sitting position and made an odd motion with his hand, as if he were driving away a fly from his face, and said something or other, calling him, or so it seemed to Vasily Andreich.

Vasily Andreich left the sacking where it was without arranging it, and approached the sledge.

"What do you want?" he asked, "what do you say?" 70