“Why don’t you get down and run a bit?”

“What for?” asked Kuzin in a weak voice.

“So you don’t freeze to death.”

“Never mind.”

The charcoal-burner sighed. Then he smiled sneeringly, wiped his nose with his sleeve, and spoke again:

“What people! What people! Why do you want to live? You’re cold, hungry…It’s crazy. Is that the way people should live? A man should live well.”

“You share your money with me, and I’ll live well,” said Salakin viciously.

“What!”

“I say, share your money…”

“I’ll share you! Did you see this?”

Before Salakin’s eyes dangled the weight hanging at the end of the chain. He saw the charcoal-burner’s face, black as the devil’s, and twisted by his smirk. And suddenly it was as though Salakin had been set a-fire, as though the heart in his breast had burst and were shooting out flame, and this flame leapt to his head and colored everything before his eyes blood-red. He swung his right hand with all his might, and striking the charcoal-burner in the face with his elbow, threw him on his back. At the same time the weight struck Salakin between the shoulder-blades. A sharp pain entered his body and crushed the breath out of him.

“Help! Murder!” shouted the charcoal-burner.

But Salakin fell upon him with his whole weight, seized the charcoal-burner’s throat with his fingers, and squeezing it, jammed his knees into the charcoal-burner’s stomach.

“Now talk! Shout! Talk!”

The charcoal-burner’s throat rattled; his teeth bit into Salakin’s shoulder. He was writhing under him like a fish under a knife and was groping with his hands for Salakin’s throat. The bludgeon fell out of his fingers and hung from a strap at his wrist. Now and then it touched Salakin’s body, and every contact, though not painful, roused fear.

“Vanyushka, help!” shouted Salakin wildly.

Vanyushka, crushed by the cold, lay in the sledge, buried under empty coal-sacks, and when he heard the charcoal-burner’s cry he was seized by terror. Instinctively he at once understood what was going on, and burrowed deeper into the sacks.…

“I’ll say I was asleep, I didn’t hear anything,” he said to himself quickly.

But when he heard his comrade’s shout for help he shuddered and flung out of the sledge like a clod of snow from under a horse’s hoof. The thought shot through his brain that should the charcoal-burner get the better of Salakin, he would kill him too. And when he found himself near the two human bodies twisted in a huge knot, when he saw the charcoal-burner’s face streaked with blood and yet still black, and the bludgeon that dangled from his right wrist while his hand convulsively tried to grasp it, Vanyushka seized his hand and began to turn and twist it.…