The “travellers’ room” had a festive appearance.  The air was full of the smell of freshly scrubbed floors, there were no rags hanging as usual on the line that ran diagonally across the room, and a little lamp was burning in the corner over the table, casting a patch of red light on the ikon of St. George the Victorious.  From the ikon stretched on each side of the corner a row of cheap oleographs, which maintained a strict and careful gradation in the transition from the sacred to the profane.  In the dim light of the candle end and the red ikon lamp the pictures looked like one continuous stripe, covered with blurs of black.  When the tiled stove, trying to sing in unison with the weather, drew in the air with a howl, while the logs, as though waking up, burst into bright flame and hissed angrily, red patches began dancing on the log walls, and over the head of the sleeping man could be seen first the Elder Seraphim, then the Shah Nasir-ed-Din, then a fat, brown baby with goggle eyes, whispering in the ear of a young girl with an extraordinarily blank, and indifferent face. . . .

Outside a storm was raging.  Something frantic and wrathful, but profoundly unhappy, seemed to be flinging itself about the tavern with the ferocity of a wild beast and trying to break in.  Banging at the doors, knocking at the windows and on the roof, scratching at the walls, it alternately threatened and besought, then subsided for a brief interval, and then with a gleeful, treacherous howl burst into the chimney, but the wood flared up, and the fire, like a chained dog, flew wrathfully to meet its foe, a battle began, and after it—­sobs, shrieks, howls of wrath.  In all of this there was the sound of angry misery and unsatisfied hate, and the mortified impatience of something accustomed to triumph.

Bewitched by this wild, inhuman music the “travellers’ room” seemed spellbound for ever, but all at once the door creaked and the potboy, in a new print shirt, came in.  Limping on one leg, and blinking his sleepy eyes, he snuffed the candle with his fingers, put some more wood on the fire and went out.  At once from the church, which was three hundred paces from the tavern, the clock struck midnight.  The wind played with the chimes as with the snowflakes; chasing the sounds of the clock it whirled them round and round over a vast space, so that some strokes were cut short or drawn out in long, vibrating notes, while others were completely lost in the general uproar.  One stroke sounded as distinctly in the room as though it had chimed just under the window.  The child, sleeping on the fox-skin, started and raised her head.  For a minute she stared blankly at the dark window, at Nasir-ed-Din over whom a crimson glow from the fire flickered at that moment, then she turned her eyes upon the sleeping man.

“Daddy,” she said.

But the man did not move.  The little girl knitted her brow angrily, lay down, and curled up her legs.  Someone in the tavern gave a loud, prolonged yawn.  Soon afterwards there was the squeak of the swing door and the sound of indistinct voices.  Someone came in, shaking the snow off, and stamping in felt boots which made a muffled thud.