All the time Ignat was gone⁠—and that lasted so long that I began to be afraid he was lost⁠—the counsellor told me in a calm, self-confident tone, how one must act during a blizzard, how the best thing of all was to unyoke a horse and let it go its own way; that as God is holy, it would lead one right; how one could sometimes see by the stars, and how if he had been driving the leading sledge, we should have been at the station long ago.

“Well, is it?” he asked Ignat, who was coming back, stepping with difficulty almost knee-deep in the snow.

“Yes, it’s an encampment,” Ignat answered, panting, “but I don’t know what sort of a one. We must have come right out to Prolgovsky homestead, mate. We must bear more to the left.”

“What nonsense!⁠ ⁠… That’s our encampment, behind the village!” retorted the counsellor.

“But I tell you it’s not!”