sledge, sat a couple of drivers. I could hear their loud and merry discourse. One of them was smoking a pipe, and the sparks, kindled by the wind, lit up part of his face.
As I looked at them I began to be ashamed that I had been afraid to go on, and my driver must have experienced much the same sensation, for we said with one voice: "Let us go after them."
III.
The hindmost troikas had not yet passed when my driver turned clumsily and struck the attached horses with the sledge shafts. One of the troika team thereupon fell heavily, tearing away the traces and plunging to one side.
"You cock-eyed devil, don't you see where you're going, driving over people like that? Devil take you!" began one of the drivers in a hoarse, quavering voice.
He was smallish and an old fellow, as far as I could judge from his voice and his position. He had been sitting in the hinder troika, but now leaped quickly out of the sledge and ran to the horses, never ceasing the whole time to curse my driver in the most coarse and cruel manner.
But the horses would not be pacified. The driver ran after them, and in a minute both horses and driver had vanished in the white mist of the snowstorm.
"Vas-il-y! bring the chestnut hither, we shall never get them else," his voice still resounded.
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