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Rh samovar; with difficulty she raised and carried it, and plumped it down on the table.

Meanwhile Vasily Andreich was telling how they had lost their way, how they had twice come back to the selfsame village, how they had gone astray and come across the party of drunken revellers. Their hosts were astonished. They explained to them why and where they had missed the road, they told them who the drunken folks were whom they had met, and made it clear to them how they ought to go.

"Why a little child could find his way as far as Molchanovka, there's a bush there you could not mistake. And yet you could not get there after all!" said the starosta.

"Won't you stay the night, then? The women will soon get a bed ready," said the old hostess.

"You can go on very well in the morning, you know. The business will wait surely," insisted the old host.

"Impossible, my brother! Business is business," said Vasily Andreich. "Lose an hour, and you won't make it up in the whole year," he added, thinking of the little wood, and of the merchants who might outbid him and spoil his bargain." We can manage it, surely," he continued, turning towards Nikita.

Nikita did not answer for some time, he seemed to be entirely engrossed with smoothing out his beard and moustaches.

"We shall not go astray again," observed he at last moodily. Nikita was moody, because he had still a burning desire for the vodka; the only thing 33