Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/56

Tales from Tolstoi bridle the joyous young horse as it plunged and reared all along the courtyard.

There were no labourers about, there was only a strange man-cook there who had come to the feast.

"Dear soul!" said Nikita to this man, "go and ask to which sledge the horse is to be put, the big common one lined with best bark, or the little one?"

The man-cook went into the house, and soon returned with the tidings that it was the little one the master would have made ready. Meanwhile Nikita put on the horse-collar, fastened on the saddle, which was well studded with brass nails, and holding in one hand a light-coloured shaft-bow and leading the horse by the other, went on to the two sledges standing beneath the shed.

"So it is to be the little one, is it — the little one?" he kept on repeating to himself as he led between the shafts the shrewd young horse, which was pretending it wanted to bite him all the time, and began attaching him thereto with the assistance of the man-cook.

When all this was nearly ready and it only remained to lead him out, Nikita sent the man-cook to the barn for hay and to the store-house for a sack.

"That'll do nicely! But no tricks now, no tricks!" said Nikita, stuffing into the sledge the fresh, well-threshed oat-hay brought to him by the man-cook from the barn.

"And now that big piece of cloth," continued Nikita, "and let us place it so, and the sack atop of it. That's right — that's right — and now it will be 6