Behind them jerked a couple of bundles, containing a small cauldron and a string of ring-shaped cakes. In the second cart, in which nobody held the reins, the young wife and her mother-in-law, with shawls over their heads, were sitting, dignified and happy. The former held a bottle of vodka under her apron. Elijah, very red in the face, sat all in a heap with his back to the horse, jolting on the front of the cart, biting into a cake and talking incessantly. The voices, the rumbling of the cartwheels on the stony road, and the snorting of the horses blent into one merry sound. The horses, swishing their tails, increased their speed more and more, feeling themselves on the homeward road. The passersby involuntarily turned round to look at the happy family party.
At the very outskirts of the town, the Doútlofs began to overtake a party of recruits. A group of them were standing in a circle outside a public-house. One of the recruits, with that unnatural expression on his face which comes of having the front of the head shaved, his grey cap pushed back, was vigorously strumming on a balalaika; another, bareheaded and with a bottle of vodka in his hand, was dancing inside the circle. Ignát got down to tighten the traces. All the Doútlofs looked with curiosity, approval, and