on his head was a cap gray with age. Vanyushka had acquired, instead of a kaftan, a brown woolen pea-jacket, but for some reason its right sleeve was black. Bast shoes, a cap with a broken visor, a cord for a belt, gave Vanyushka the appearance not of a peasant, but of an artisan who had drunk all his earnings.

On the eve of the day when they decided to do the job, Salakin succeeded in hooking a copper pan and an iron, and sold them for eighty kopecks to a dealer in scrap-iron, and now he had a fifty-kopeck piece in his pocket.

“If only we could meet someone with a horse and get a lift,” said Salakin. “Otherwise we won’t get there before dark—it’s a distance of over forty versts! We could even pay five kopecks apiece, for the lift.…”

The snow dropped on their heads, fell on their cheeks, pasted up their eyes, formed white epaulettes on their shoulders, stuck to their feet. Around them and above them a white porridge was seething, and they could see nothing in front of them. Vanyushka walked silently, like a sick old jade which is being led to the slaughter-house, while the lively, talkative Salakin kept glancing about him and chattered ceaselessly.

“I wonder how far we’ve gone! And there’s no seeing what’s in front of us! What a snow-fall.…Of course, the snow plays into our hands: there will be no traces.…If only it kept coming down! Only then it will be awkward to get the fire going! Well, you can’t have everything.…”

The snowflakes were becoming smaller and drier. They did not fall slowly, straight to the ground, but circled uneasily and fussily in the air in larger quantities. Suddenly a rickety structure, looking as though it had been pressed into the ground by the heavy drifts on its roof, loomed before them like a dark, heavy cloud.

“That’s Fokino,” said Salakin. “Let’s go into the pot-house and have a glass…”

“Let’s,” Vanyushka agreed, shuddering all over.

Two horses, each hitched to a sledge, stood motionless before the pot-house. Small, shaggy, they gazed sadly out of their meek eyes, shaking off the snow from their eye-lashes. The unpainted shaft-bows were covered with black dust.

“Aha, a charcoal-burner!” said Salakin. “I hope he’s going our way.…”

And indeed, in the pot-house, at a table near the window sat a young fellow drinking beer. Vanyushka was struck by his long funny nose on a thin face covered with black spots. The charcoal-burner was sprawling importantly on the chair with his legs wide apart, and sipping his beer slowly, but when he was through drinking, he started coughing, his whole body shook, and he at once lost his air of importance.

Vanyushka went over to the counter, swallowed a glass of fragrant, bitter vodka, and glanced from the charcoal-burner to Salakin with a wink.

“Going to town, my hearty?” asked Salakin, approaching the charcoal-burner.

The other looked at him and answered in a hollow voice:

“We don’t go to town without a load.”

“So you’re coming from town?”

“What does it matter to you?”