'He must have frozen too,' thought Nikita of Mukhorty, and indeed those
hoof knocks against the sledge, which had awakened Nikita, were the last
efforts the already numbed Mukhorty had made to keep on his feet before
dying.

'O Lord God, it seems Thou art calling me too!' said Nikita. 'Thy Holy
Will be done. But it's uncanny. . . . Still, a man can't die twice and
must die once. If only it would come soon!'

And he again drew in his head, closed his eyes, and became unconscious,
fully convinced that now he was certainly and finally dying.


It was not till noon that day that peasants dug Vasili Andreevich and
Nikita out of the snow with their shovels, not more than seventy yards
from the road and less than half a mile from the village.

The snow had hidden the sledge, but the shafts and the kerchief tied to
them were still visible. Mukhorty, buried up to his belly in snow, with
the breeching and drugget hanging down, stood all white, his dead head
pressed against his frozen throat: icicles hung from his nostrils, his
eyes were covered with hoar-frost as though filled with tears, and he
had grown so thin in that one night that he was nothing but skin and
bone.

Vasili Andreevich was stiff as a frozen carcass, and when they rolled
him off Nikita his legs remained apart and his arms stretched out as
they had been. His bulging hawk eyes were frozen, and his open mouth
under his clipped moustache was full of snow. But Nikita though chilled