He remained silent and lay like that for a long time.

Nikita kept him warm from below and his fur coats from above. Only his
hands, with which he kept his coat-skirts down round Nikita's sides, and
his legs which the wind kept uncovering, began to freeze, especially his
right hand which had no glove. But he did not think of his legs or of
his hands but only of how to warm the peasant who was lying under him.
He looked out several times at Mukhorty and could see that his back was
uncovered and the drugget and breeching lying on the snow, and that he
ought to get up and cover him, but he could not bring himself to leave
Nikita and disturb even for a moment the joyous condition he was in. He
no longer felt any kind of terror.

'No fear, we shan't lose him this time!' he said to himself, referring
to his getting the peasant warm with the same boastfulness with which he
spoke of his buying and selling.

Vasili Andreevich lay in that way for one hour, another, and a third,
but he was unconscious of the passage of time. At first impressions
of the snow-storm, the sledge-shafts, and the horse with the shaft-bow
shaking before his eyes, kept passing through his mind, then he
remembered Nikita lying under him, then recollections of the festival,
his wife, the police-officer, and the box of candles, began to mingle
with these; then again Nikita, this time lying under that box, then the
peasants, customers and traders, and the white walls of his house with
its iron roof with Nikita lying underneath, presented themselves to
his imagination. Afterwards all these impressions blended into one
nothingness. As the colours of the rainbow unite into one white light,
so all these different impressions mingled into one, and he fell asleep.