Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/128

Tales from Tolstoi "Lord and Father! it is plain that Thou art calling me also," said Nikita, "Thy Holy Will be done. It is very hard. Well, I hope there will soon be two deaths, and not one be taken and the other left. I only hope it will soon all be over. …" And again he hid his arms, closed his eyes, and surrendered himself to his fate, fully persuaded that he was now really and truly about to die.

By dinner-time next day the muzhiks had already dug out Vasily Andreich and Nikita with their spades. They were lying about thirty fathoms from the road, and half a mile from the village.

The snow had risen higher than the sledge, but the shafts and the piece of cloth tied to them were still visible. Brownie, up to his stomach in the snow, with the sacking and harness still dangling from his back, was standing there all white, pressing his dead head against his stone-hard, stone-cold neck; his nostrils were covered with icicles, his eyes were frost-bitten, and were frozen all round with what looked like congealed tears. He had gone so thin in a single night that nothing remained of him but hide and bones. Vasily Andreich was as hard and stiff as a cured and salted porpoise. His prominent vulture-like eyes were frozen hard, his mouth beneath his well-clipped moustaches was full of snow. Nikita was still alive, though all frost-bitten. When they awoke Nikita he was persuaded that now indeed he was dead, and the things they were doing to him were going on not in this but in the other world. But when he heard the cries of the muzhiks digging him out, and saw them dragging from off him the stone 78