Voytek and the girl went out, sat in the sleigh. Voytek cried to the horses, and they moved on. At first the sleigh dragged heavily enough through the slush of the town, but they came out very soon to fields which were broad and white. Movement was easy then; the snow barely made a noise under the sleigh-runners. The horses snorted at times, at times came the barking of dogs from a distance.
They went on and on. Voytek urged the horses, and sang through his nose, “Dog ear, remember thy promise.” But soon he grew silent, and began to “carry Jews” (nod). He nodded to the right, to the left. He dreamt that they were pounding him on the shoulders in Leschyntsi, because he had lost a basket of letters; so, from time to time, he was half awake, and repeated: “To all!” Marysia did not sleep, for she was cold. She looked with widely opened eyes on the white fields, hidden from moment to moment by the dark shoulders of Margula. She thought also that her “mother was dead;” and thinking thus, she pictured to herself perfectly the pale and thin face of her mother with its staring eyes,—and she felt half consciously that that face was greatly beloved, that it was no longer in the world, and would never be in Leschyntsi again. She had seen with her own eyes how they covered it up in Lupiskory. Remembering this, she would have cried from grief; but as her knees and feet were chilled, she began to cry from cold.
There was no frost, it is true, but the air was penetrating, as is usual during thaws. As to Voytek he had, at least in his stomach, a good supply of heat taken from the inn. The landowner at Lupiskory remarked justly: “That vodka warms in winter, and since it is the only consolation of our peasants, to deprive landowners of the sole power of consoling peasants is to deprive them of influence over the populace.” Voytek was so consoled at that moment that nothing could trouble him.
Even this did not trouble him, that the horses when they came to the forest slackened their pace altogether, though the road there was better, and then walking to one side, the beasts turned over the sleigh into a ditch. He woke, it is true, but did not understand well what had happened.
Marysia begun to push him.
“Voytek!”
“Why art thou croaking?”
“The sleigh is turned over.”
“A glass?” asked Voytek, and went to sleep for good.
The little girl sat by the sleigh, crouching down as best she could, and remained there. But her face was soon chilled, so she began to push the sleeping man again.