strange and ridiculous it was to hear the bells jingling so merrily and carelessly, and Ignatka shouting so energetically and delightfully as though it were a sunny Christmas noon, and we were hurrying to a festival along the village street; and stranger than all it was to think that we were always riding and riding rapidly away from the place where we had been. Ignat began to sing some song in a horrible falsetto, but so loud and with such stops, during which he whistled, that it was weird to listen to, and made one melancholy. "Hey-y-y! Why are you splitting your throat, Ignat? Hold on a bit!" said the voice of the mentor. "What?" "Hold o-o-o-o-n!" Ignat reined up. Again silence only broken by the wailing and whistling of the wind, while the snow began to pile up, rustling on the sledge. The mentor drove up to us. "Well, what is it?" "Say![19] where are you going?" "Who knows?" "Are your feet frozen, that you stamp so?" "They're frozen off." "Well, you ought to go this way. The way you were going means starvation,--not even a Kalmuck there. Get out, and it will warm your legs." "All right. Hold the horses--there." And Ignat stumped off in the direction indicated. "Have to keep looking all the time, have to get out and hunt; then you find the way. But this way's a crazy way to go," said the mentor. "See how tired the horses are." All the time that Ignat was gone, and it was so long that I actually began to be afraid that he had lost his way, the mentor kept talking to me in a self-confident, easy tone, telling me how it was necessary to behave in a snowstorm; how much better it was to unhitch one of the horses, and let her go as God Almighty should direct; how sometimes you can see the stars occasionally; and how, if he had taken the front place, we should have been at the station long before. "Well, how is it?" he asked, as Ignat came back, ploughing with difficulty knee-deep in snow. "Not so bad. I found a Kalmuck camp," replied the driver, out of breath. "Still I don't know where we are. It must be that we have been going toward Prolgovsky forest. We must turn to the left." "Why worry? It must be the camp just behind our station," replied the mentor. "I tell you it isn't." "Well, I've seen it, and so I know. If it isn't that, then it's Tamuishevskoé. You must turn to the right; and soon we'll be on the big bridge,--eight versts." "Say what you will, 'tain't so. I have seen it," said Ignat angrily. "Eh! what's that? I am a yamshchík as much as you are." "Fine yamshchík! you go ahead, then." "Why should I go ahead? But I know." Ignat was evidently angry. Without replying, he climbed to his seat, and drove on. "You see how cold one's feet get. No way to warm them," said he to Alyoshka, pounding his feet more and more frequently, and brushing and shaking off the snow which had got into his boot-legs. I felt an uncontrollable desire to sleep. [Footnote 17: _Nu, daï Bog vam, bárin._]