in the wind, which he had already passed twice, and such a terror fell upon him that he did not believe in the reality of what was actually happening to him. "Is not all this a dream?" he thought of himself; and he wanted to awake from his dream, but there could be no awakening, for it was reality. It was really snow which stung his face like a whip and threatened to overwhelm him; it was really a wilderness in which he now found himself all alone, like that clump of black mugwort, awaiting a rapid, an inevitable, an unthinkable death.
"O Heavenly Queen! O Wonder-working Nicholas. Teach me the way of abstinence!" he began, calling to mind the vesper prayers, and the holy image with the black face and the golden ornaments, and the tapers which he had bought for this holy image—the tapers which had been brought back to him immediately, and which he had hidden away in his strong box, though they had scarce been more than lighted. And yet now he was praying this selfsame Nicholas, the Wonder-worker, to save him, and was promising him prayers and fresh tapers. But now, too, he clearly understood, without any doubt, that this image, this rich ornamentation, these tapers and the clergy with their prayers—all these things were very important and necessary in church, but that here they could do nothing for him, for between those tapers and those images and his present miserable condition there was not and could not be any connection.
"I must not lose heart, I must follow up the traces of the horse, though both they and it are now covered
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