the snowfall from above increased in violence, and the wind also blew more violently, the posts on the right side and the left continued to be visible.
And so they went on for the next ten minutes, when suddenly, right in front of the horse, appeared a black something, moving along in a perfect network of fine snow driven along by the wind. They were fellow-travellers travelling in the same direction. Brownie regularly ran them down, and grazed the box-seat of the sledge in front with his hoofs.
"Go round — go round in front!" cried the people in the other sledge.
Vasily Andreich set about going in front. There were three muzhiks and an old woman in the other sledge. Evidently they were guests returning home from a feast. One of the muzhiks was whipping up the horse from behind with a bundle of twigs. Two of the muzhiks in the front part of the sledge were waving their hands and screeching something. The woman, wrapped closely up and covered with snow, was sitting silently, like a big puffed-up bundle of clothes, in the back part of the sledge.
"Who do you belong to?" cried Vasily Andreich.
"A-a-a-sky!" was all that was audible.
"Who do you belong to, I say?"
"A-a-a-sky!" roared one of the muzhiks with all his might, and yet it was impossible to make out whom they meant.
The sledges grazed each other as they passed. They seemed interlocked one moment, and the next they were free of each other again, and then the peasants' sledge began to draw away.
23
