“First-rate, Ivan Ivanitch!”

“Haven’t you seen Varlamov, lads?”

“No, we haven’t.”

Yegorushka woke up and opened his eyes. The chaise had stopped. On the right the train of wagons stretched for a long way ahead on the road, and men were moving to and fro near them. All the wagons being loaded up with great bales of wool looked very high and fat, while the horses looked short-legged and little.

“Well, then, we shall go on to the Molokans’!” Kuzmitchov said aloud. “The Jew told us that Varlamov was putting up for the night at the Molokans’. So goodbye, lads! Good luck to you!”

“Goodbye, Ivan Ivanitch,” several voices replied.

“I say, lads,” Kuzmitchov cried briskly, “you take my little lad along with you! Why should he go jolting off with us for nothing? You put him on the bales, Panteley, and let him come on slowly, and we shall overtake you. Get down, Yegor! Go on; it’s all right.⁠ ⁠…”

Yegorushka got down from the box-seat. Several hands caught him, lifted him high into the air, and he found himself on something big, soft, and rather wet with dew. It seemed to him now as though the sky were quite close and the earth far away.

“Hey, take his little coat!” Deniska shouted from somewhere far below.

His coat and bundle flung up from far below fell close to Yegorushka. Anxious not to think of anything, he quickly put his bundle under his head and covered himself with his coat, and stretching his legs out and shrinking a little from the dew, he laughed with content.

“Sleep, sleep, sleep,⁠ ⁠…” he thought.