"Yes, a good youngster and a true man," said Nikita.
They proceeded on their way. Nikita, wrapping himself well up, and huddling his head well down between his shoulders so that his short beard might lie all round about his neck, sat there in silence, trying not to lose the warmth with which the tea had filled him. Right in front of him he saw the straight lines of the sledge-shafts perpetually deluding him into the belief that they were on a smooth, level road; the waggling hind-quarters of the horse, with the turned-up knob of the tail hanging over on one side; and, further on in front, the lofty arched crosspiece of the sledge, and the head and neck of the horse, with its long streaming mane bobbing up and down. Now and then his eyes fell upon a post here and there, so he knew that so far they were keeping to the road, and there was nought for him to do.
Vasily Andreich simply drove straight on, leaving it to the horse itself to keep to the road. But Brownie, notwithstanding the fact that he had rested at the village, trotted on unwillingly, and made as though he would have turned aside from the road, so that Vasily Andreich had once or twice to put him right.
"There's one post yonder on the right, and then a second, and then a third," calculated Vasily Andreich, "and right in front is the wood," thought he, looking at some black object in front of him. But what had appeared to him a wood was only a bush. They passed the bush, they went on further some twenty fathoms, and there was no fourth post and no wood.
40
