‘I’m dy... ing, that’s what,’ said Nikita brokenly and with difficulty. ‘Give what is owing to me to my lad, or to my wife, no matter.’
‘Why, are you really frozen?’ asked Vasili Andreevich.
‘I feel it’s my death. Forgive me for Christ’s sake...’ said Nikita in a tearful voice, continuing to wave his hand before his face as if driving away flies.
Vasili Andreevich stood silent and motionless for half a minute. Then suddenly, with the same resolution with which he used to strike hands when making a good purchase, he took a step back and turning up his sleeves began raking the snow off Nikita and out of the sledge. Having done this he hurriedly undid his girdle, opened out his fur coat, and having pushed Nikita down, lay down on top of him, covering him not only with his fur coat but with the whole of his body, which glowed with warmth. After pushing the skirts of his coat between Nikita and the sides of the sledge, and holding down its hem with his knees, Vasili Andreevich lay like that face down, with his head pressed against the front of the sledge. Here he no longer heard the horse’s movements or the whistling of the wind, but only Nikita’s breathing. At first and for a long time Nikita lay motionless, then he sighed deeply and moved.
‘There, and you say you are dying! Lie still and get warm, that’s our way...’ began Vasili Andreevich.
But to his great surprise he could say no more, for tears came to his eyes and his lower jaw began to quiver rapidly. He stopped speaking and only gulped down the risings in his throat. ‘Seems I was badly frightened and have gone quite weak,’ he thought. But this weakness was not only unpleasant, but gave him a peculiar joy such as he had never felt before.
‘That’s our way!’ he said to himself, experiencing a strange and solemn tenderness. He lay like that for a long time, wiping his eyes on the fur of his coat and tucking under his knee the right skirt, which the wind kept turning up.
But he longed so passionately to tell somebody of his joyful condition that he said: ‘Nikita!’
‘It’s comfortable, warm!’ came a voice from beneath.
‘There, you see, friend, I was going to perish. And you would have been frozen, and I should have...’