veiled by the drifting snow, the short figure of the driver holding a big whip with which he was trying the snow in front of him. He moved backwards and forwards in the white darkness, came back to the sledge again, jumped sideways on the front seat, and again through the monotonous whistling of the wind we could hear his jaunty, musical calling to his horses and the ringing of the bells. Every time that the front driver got out to search for signs of the road or of stacks, a brisk self-confident voice from the second sledge shouted to him—
“I say, Ignashka, we’ve gone right off to the left! Keep more to the right, away from the storm.” Or, “Why do you go round and round like a fool? Go the way of the snow, you’ll get there all right.” Or, “To the right, go on to the right, my lad! See, there ’s something black—a verst post maybe.” Or, “What are you pottering about for? Unyoke the piebald and let him go first; he’ll bring you on the road in a trice. That’ll be the best plan.”
The man who gave this advice did not himself unyoke the trace-horse, nor get out into the snow to look for the road; he did not so much as poke his nose out beyond the shelter of the cloak, and when Ignashka in reply to one of his counsels, shouted to him that he’d better ride on in front himself as he knew which way to go, the giver of good advice answered that, if he were driving the mail horses, he would ride on and would soon bring them on to the road. “But our horses won’t lead the way in a storm!” he shouted; “they’re not that sort!”
“Don’t meddle then!” answered Ignashka, whistling merrily to his horses.
The other driver, sitting in the same sledge as the counsellor, said nothing to Ignashka, and refrained altogether from taking part in the proceedings, though he was not yet asleep, as I concluded from his still glowing pipe, and from the fact that when we stopped I heard his