The horse kept straight along the road through the drifted snow, and before they had gone another hundred yards the straight line of the dark wattle wall of a barn showed up black before them, its roof heavily covered with snow which poured down from it. After passing the barn the road turned to the wind and they drove into a snowdrift. But ahead of them was a lane with houses on either side, so evidently the snow had been blown across the road and they had to drive through the drift. And so in fact it was. Having driven through the snow they came out into a street. At the end house of the village some frozen clothes hanging on a line⁠—shirts, one red and one white, trousers, leg-bands, and a petticoat⁠—fluttered wildly in the wind. The white shirt in particular struggled desperately, waving its sleeves about.

“There now, either a lazy woman or a dead one has not taken her clothes down before the holiday,” remarked Nikíta, looking at the fluttering shirts.