Darkness . . . darkness everlasting!
Scarcely breathing, I awoke.
March 1878.
MASHA
When I lived, many years ago, in Petersburg, every time I chanced to hire a sledge, I used to get into conversation with the driver.
I was particularly fond of talking to the night drivers, poor peasants from the country round, who come to the capital with their little ochre-painted sledges and wretched nags, in the hope of earning food for themselves and rent for their masters.
So one day I engaged such a sledge-driver. . . . He was a lad of twenty, tall and well-made, a splendid fellow with blue eyes and ruddy cheeks; his fair hair curled in little ringlets under the shabby little patched cap that was pulled over his eyes. And how had that little torn smock ever been drawn over those gigantic shoulders!
But the handsome, beardless face of the sledge-driver looked mournful and downcast. I began to talk to him. There was a sorrowful note in his voice too.
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