at all, or were blown out by the wind at the very moment when he raised them to his cigarette. At last one little match burnt brightly and lit up for an instant the fur of his cloak, his hand with the gold ring on the inwardly crooked index finger, and the oaten straw sprinkled with snow which had forced its way out of the big sack beneath him—and his cigarette was lighted. Once or twice he greedily sucked away, swallowed the smoke, puffed it out through his lips, and would have lit up again, but the tobacco and the matches dropped from his grasp and were lost somewhere or other amidst the straw.
Yet even those few whiffs of tobacco had cheered up Vasily Andreich.
"Well, if we are to stay the night here, we must make the best of it!" said he decidedly. And catching sight of the elevated shafts, the desire seized him to make this sign of distress still more forcible and give Nikita a lesson. "You just wait a bit, and I'll make a flag of it," said he, picking up his handkerchief, which he had taken from his neck and thrown into the sledge; and taking off his gloves and stretching forward to reach the shafts, he fastened the hand-kerchief with a thick knot to the saddle-strap at the end of the shafts.
The little bit of cloth immediately began shivering violently, now clinging to the shafts, now suddenly bulging out, stretching, and fluttering.
"What do you say, to that?" cried Vasily Andreich, delighted with his handiwork, and he crept into the sledge again. "'Twould be warmer if we both sat close together, and you won't, I suppose," said he.
49
