“Tell me where my horse is, or I’ll knock the life out of you,” shouted Yergunov.

“Get away, dirty brute!” she said in a hoarse voice.

Yergunov seized her by the shift near the neck and tore it.  And then he could not restrain himself, and with all his might embraced the girl.  But hissing with fury, she slipped out of his arms, and freeing one hand—­the other was tangled in the torn shift—­hit him a blow with her fist on the skull.

His head was dizzy with the pain, there was a ringing and rattling in his ears, he staggered back, and at that moment received another blow—­this time on the temple.  Reeling and clutching at the doorposts, that he might not fall, he made his way to the room where his things were, and lay down on the bench; then after lying for a little time, took the matchbox out of his pocket and began lighting match after match for no object:  he lit it, blew it out, and threw it under the table, and went on till all the matches were gone.

Meanwhile the air began to turn blue outside, the cocks began to crow, but his head still ached, and there was an uproar in his ears as though he were sitting under a railway bridge and hearing the trains passing over his head.  He got, somehow, into his coat and cap; the saddle and the bundle of his purchases he could not find, his knapsack was empty:  it was not for nothing that someone had scurried out of the room when he came in from the yard.

He took a poker from the kitchen to keep off the dogs, and went out into the yard, leaving the door open.  The snow-storm had subsided and it was calm outside. . . .  When he went out at the gate, the white plain looked dead, and there was not a single bird in the morning sky.  On both sides of the road and in the distance there were bluish patches of young copse.

Yergunov began thinking how he would be greeted at the hospital and what the doctor would say to him; it was absolutely necessary to think of that, and to prepare beforehand to answer questions he would be asked, but this thought grew blurred and slipped away.  He walked along thinking of nothing but Lyubka, of the peasants with whom he had passed the night; he remembered how, after Lyubka struck him the second time, she had bent down to the floor for the quilt, and how her loose hair had fallen on the floor.  His mind was in a maze, and he wondered why there were in the world doctors, hospital assistants, merchants, clerks, and peasants instead of simple free men?  There are, to be sure, free birds, free beasts, a free Merik, and they are not afraid of anyone, and don’t need anyone!  And whose idea was it, who had decreed that one must get up in the morning, dine at midday, go to bed in the evening; that a doctor takes precedence of a hospital assistant; that one must live in rooms and love only one’s wife?  And why not the contrary—­dine at night and sleep in the day?  Ah, to jump on a horse without enquiring whose it is, to ride races with the wind like a devil, over fields and forests and ravines, to make love to girls, to mock at everyone . . . .