“Then I’m going alone—good-bye.”
Kostilin jumped up and followed.
They walked another three miles. The mist grew denser; they could not see ahead of them and the stars were no longer visible.
They suddenly heard a trampling of horses coming from the direction in which they were going. They could hear the horse’s hoofs hit against the stones. Jilin lay flat down and put his ear to the ground to listen.
“There is certainly a horseman coming towards us,” he said. They ran off the path into the thicket and sat down to wait. After a while Jilin crept out into the path to look. A mounted Tartar was coming along, driving a cow and humming softly to himself. When he had passed Jilin turned to Kostilin, “Thank God the danger is over. Come, let us go.”
Kostilin attempted to rise, but dropped down again.
“I can’t, I can’t! I’ve no more strength left.”
The man was heavy and stout and had perspired freely. The heavy mist had chilled him, tired and bleeding as he was, and made him quite stiff. Jilin tried to lift him, but Kostilin cried out, “Oh, it hurts!”
Jilin turned to stone.
“Why did you shout? The Tartar is still near; he will have heard you,” he remonstrated, while to himself he thought, “The man is evidently exhausted; what shall I do with him? I can’t desert him.” “Come,” he said, “climb on to my back, then, and I’ll carry you if you really can’t walk.”