X

Nikita awoke before daybreak. He was aroused by the cold that had begun
to creep down his back. He had dreamt that he was coming from the mill
with a load of his master's flour and when crossing the stream had
missed the bridge and let the cart get stuck. And he saw that he had
crawled under the cart and was trying to lift it by arching his back.
But strange to say the cart did not move, it stuck to his back and he
could neither lift it nor get out from under it. It was crushing the
whole of his loins. And how cold it felt! Evidently he must crawl out.
'Have done!' he exclaimed to whoever was pressing the cart down on him.
'Take out the sacks!' But the cart pressed down colder and colder,
and then he heard a strange knocking, awoke completely, and remembered
everything. The cold cart was his dead and frozen master lying upon him.
And the knock was produced by Mukhorty, who had twice struck the sledge
with his hoof.

'Andreevich! Eh, Andreevich!' Nikita called cautiously, beginning to
realize the truth, and straightening his back. But Vasili Andreevich did
not answer and his stomach and legs were stiff and cold and heavy like
iron weights.

'He must have died! May the Kingdom of Heaven be his!' thought Nikita.

He turned his head, dug with his hand through the snow about him and
opened his eyes. It was daylight; the wind was whistling as before
between the shafts, and the snow was falling in the same way, except
that it was no longer driving against the frame of the sledge but
silently covered both sledge and horse deeper and deeper, and neither
the horse's movements nor his breathing were any longer to be heard.