“On the peasant asking me where I was going, I replied ‘To Tara.’
“‘Give me sixty kopeks (ten sous), and I will take you to Tara, where I am going myself.’
“‘No, it’s too much; fifty kopeks if you like.’
“I took my place next to him; we started at a gallop, and in half an hour were at Tara. Left alone, I asked, according to the Russian custom, at the first house I saw, if I could get any horses.
“‘I wont give so much. Six kopeks. What do you say to that?’
In a short time the horses were ready and harnessed to the sleigh.
“‘And where are you from?’ was asked of me.
“‘From Tomsk. I am the employé of N. (I gave the first name that occurred to me); my master has gone on before me to Irbite. I had to stay behind for some small matters, and am horribly late; I fear he will be angry. If you will take me there quickly, I will give you something more for yourself.’
“The peasant whistled, and the horses started like arrows. All at once the clouds gathered, the snow began to fall thickly, and the peasant lost his way, and after wandering about a good deal, we were obliged to halt, and pass the night in the forest. I pretended to be greatly enraged, and my guide humbly begged my forgiveness. It would be impossible to describe the terrible anxiety of that night, spent in a sleigh in the midst of a snowstorm, scarcely four miles distant from Ekaterininski-Zavod, and expecting every minute to hear the bells of the _kibitkas_ sent in pursuit of me. At last the day began to dawn.
“‘We will return to Tara,’ I said to the peasant, ‘where I shall engage another sleigh. As for you, fool, you may expect nothing. I will take care, moreover, to give you up to the police for making me waste my time.’ The poor peasant, quite ashamed, started to return to Tara, but scarcely had he gone a verst, when he stopped, looked round, and showing the vestige of a pathway under the drifts of snow, said, ‘That is the road we should have taken!’ ‘Follow it then,’ I said, ‘and God speed us.’ He then did his utmost to make up for lost time. A most horrible idea struck me just then; I remembered how our unhappy Colonel Wysocki was, like me, detained in the forest for a whole night, and was given up to the gendarmes by his guide. Vain terrors! The peasant took me to a friend’s house, where I managed to get tea and some fresh horses. So I went on, changing my horses at very moderate prices; when having arrived late one night at a village called Soldatskaïa, and not having sufficient money to pay my guide, I went with him to an inn filled with a number of drunken wretches. I had taken from under my waistcoat a few notes, intending to have one or two changed by the landlord, when a movement of the crowd, done purposely or not, I cannot tell, pushed me from the table where I had spread my papers, which were quickly seized by some clever hand. In vain I made my loss known: I never could discover the thief, nor seriously think of calling in the gendarmes; so I resigned myself to my misfortune. I was in that manner deprived of forty-five roubles in notes; but what greatly increased my regrets, and even my terror, was the fact that the thief had taken at the same time two papers of the greatest worth to me: a small sheet on which I had inscribed the towns and villages I must pass through on my way to Archangel, and my passport, the one on stamped paper, the making of which had cost me so much pains. Thus at the outset I lost almost a quarter of the modest allowance for my journey, the note that was to have been my guide, and the only paper capable of satisfying any curious people. I was in despair.”