At last he grew so tired and frightened that he threw himself on the ground in a kind of despair, made the sign of the cross, said a prayer to his patron St. John the evangelist, then fell into a state of drowsiness, and lost all sense of time, until, after an interval of perhaps an hour, he was aroused by the sound of voices. Never had human voices seemed more welcome. Ivan started to his feet, and saw to his great delight a party of five or six mujiks, carrying large baskets of cabbages and other vegetables. Greetings were soon exchanged. His new friends told him that they were journeying from a distant village to a fair at Kaluga, a town on the other bank of the Oka. They intended, after crossing the river, to travel all night, that they might reach the fair with their merchandise early the next morning. They took the tired little wayfarer by the hand and helped him on, encouraging him with kind words, and telling him they were now not far from the ferry. At last the river appeared in the distance, glimmering in the light of the rising moon. “Look,” cried his companions, “yonder is the Oka.” But Ivan was by this time too weary to care; he could scarcely keep his eyes open and his feet moving. They drew nearer and nearer. The river was as broad as the Thames--a fine sheet of water, with green banks on either side. From these there came a hoarse, monotonous sound--the croaking of innumerable frogs, which some one has unpoetically called “the nightingales of Russia.” Soon a brown wooden shed came into view, where the men said they would find kvass, and perhaps even vodka.[6] This roused Ivan, who was still tormented with thirst. He saw the moonlight upon the waters; the grassy sward beside them; the rough boat-house, out of which a withered old woman, with a red handkerchief wrapped around her head and a torch of pine-wood in her hand, came to meet the wayfarers. There was no boat to be had, she said; her son had not returned, though she expected him before sundown;--she could not think what detained him. The peasants were grievously disappointed. The sale of their merchandise depended on their reaching the fair in good time, so their vexation was quite natural. It was somewhat allayed, however, by the offer of vodka, that charmer so fatally dear to the heart of the mujik. And their weary little companion was not quite forgotten. “Give the little one a taste, mother,” they said. “Poor child, he is ready to faint.” It was to the honour of the people of Nicolofsky that, though themselves no patterns of sobriety, they had at least kept the destroyer from the young lips of their nursling. Ivan turned from the fiery beverage with loathing, and asked for kvass. “Here is no kvass,” said the old woman roughly. “No man would be fool enough to drink it who could get vodka. But you can have water, if you like.”