"Of course," he thinks on, "a fur coat is better; it's warm—beautifully warm. But spectacles come first. A fur is only good for winter, and spectacles are wanted all the year round, because in summer, when there's a wind and it blows the dust into your eyes, it's worse than in winter."
And so it was settled; first spectacles and then a fur coat. Please God, he would help to carry corn—that would mean four gulden.
And he tramped on, and the wet snow was blown into his face, the wind grew stronger, and his side pained him more than ever.
"If only the wind would change! And yet perhaps it's better so, because coming back I shall feel more tired, and I shall have the wind in my back. Then it will be quite different. Everything will be done; I shall have nothing on my mind."
He was obliged to stop a minute and draw breath; this rather frightened him.
"What is the matter with me? A Cantonist[23] ought to know something of the cold," he thought sadly.
And he recalls his time of service under Nicholas, twenty-five years' active service with the musket, beside his childhood as a Cantonist. He has walked enough in his life, marching over hill and dale, in snow and frost and every sort of wind. And what snows, what frosts! The trees would split, the little birds fall dead to the ground, and the Russian soldier marched briskly forward, and even sang a song, a trepak, a komarinski, and beat time with his feet.
The thought of having endured those thirty-five years of service, of having lived through all those hardships, all those snows, all those winds, all the mud, hunger, thirst, and privation, and having come home in health—the thought fills him with pride. He holds up his head and feels his strength renewed.
"Ha, ha, what is a bit of a frost like this to me? In Russia, well, yes, there it was something like."
He walks on, the wind has lessened a little, it grows darker, night is falling.