'No, friend. I must get on.'

'Your business must be pressing. And who is this? Ah, Nikita Stepanych!'

'Who else?' replied Nikita. 'But I say, good friend, how are we to avoid
going astray again?'

'Where can you go astray here? Turn back straight down the street and
then when you come out keep straight on. Don't take to the left. You
will come out onto the high road, and then turn to the right.'

'And where do we turn off the high road? As in summer, or the winter
way?' asked Nikita.

'The winter way. As soon as you turn off you'll see some bushes, and
opposite them there is a way-mark--a large oak, one with branches--and
that's the way.'

Vasili Andreevich turned the horse back and drove through the outskirts
of the village.

'Why not stay the night?' Isay shouted after them.

But Vasili Andreevich did not answer and touched up the horse. Four
miles of good road, two of which lay through the forest, seemed easy to
manage, especially as the wind was apparently quieter and the snow had
stopped.

Having driven along the trodden village street, darkened here and there
by fresh manure, past the yard where the clothes hung out and where the