Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/98

Tales from Tolstoi them on one side, undid the thongs of the horse-collar, took it off, and all the time never ceased talking to the horse in order to encourage it.

"Out you come, out you come!" he said, leading it out of the shafts, "and now we're going to tie you up. I'll give you some nice straw, and let you go," he continued, doing what he said. "Taste and tell me if you are not having a nice time of it?"

But Brownie, visibly, was not soothed by Nikita's words, and indeed was very ill at ease. He fidgeted about from foot to foot, and pressed hard against the sledge, stood with his back to the wind, and rubbed his head on Nikita's sleeve.

Just as if he did not want to refuse Nikita's hospitality with the straw, which Nikita had thrust beneath his snout, Brownie did, indeed, petulantly snatch a bit of straw out of the sledge, but immediately afterwards he decided that this was no time for straw, and threw it away, and instantly the wind caught it, scattered it, and covered it with snow.

"And now we'll make a sign," said Nikita, turning to the sledge so as to face the wind, and fastening the saddle-strap to the shafts, he raised them aloft, and fixed them so that they faced frontwards. "So there we are, and good people will catch sight of the shafts and the fluttering strap, and will find us and dig us out," said Nikita, "just as our elders have told us."

Meanwhile Vasily Andreich, unloosening his fur jacket, and crouching beneath its folds, was striking match after match on his steel match-box, but his hands trembled, and the matches either did not ignite 48