He was tired; he was choking; his legs were shaking under him. His bruised body ached miserably, his breathing strangled him, his feet and hands were growing numb, and red-hot bands seemed tightening around his bare head.
“I shall die!” came more and more frequently into his mind, but still he walked on.
The taiga held its peace. It closed about him with obdurate hostility and gave him no light and no hope.
“I shall die!” Makar kept thinking.
His strength left him altogether. The saplings now beat him squarely in the face without the least shame, in derision at his helpless plight. As he crossed one little glade a white hare ran out, sat up on its hind legs, waved its long, black-tipped ears, and began to wash its face, making the rudest grimaces at Makar. It gave him to understand that it knew him well, knew him to be the same Makar who had devised cunning means of destruction for it in the forest; but now it was its turn to jeer.
Makar felt bitterly sad. The taiga grew more animated, but with a malign activity. Even the distant trees now threw their long branches across his way, snatched at his hair, and beat his face and eyes. The ptarmigans came out of their secret coverts and fixed their round, curious eyes upon him, and the wood-grouse ran in and out among them with drooping tails and angry, spreading wings, loudly telling their mates of him, Makar, and of his snares. Finally, a thousand fox-faces glanced from the distant thickets; they sniffed the air and looked derisively at him, pricking their sharp ears. Then the hares came and stood on their hind legs before him and shouted with laughter as they told of Makar’s misfortune.
That was too much.
“I shall die!” thought Makar, and he decided to do so as quickly as possible.
He lay down on the snow.
The cold increased. The last rays of the Aurora flickered faintly and stretched across the sky to peep at Makar through the tree-tops. The last echoes of the church bells came floating to him from far-away Chalgan.