“Well, then, we shall go on to the Molokans’!” Kuzmitchov said aloud.  “The Jew told us that Varlamov was putting up for the night at the Molokans’.  So good-bye, lads!  Good luck to you!”

“Good-bye, Ivan Ivanitch,” several voices replied.

“I say, lads,” Kuzmitchov cried briskly, “you take my little lad along with you!  Why should he go jolting off with us for nothing?  You put him on the bales, Panteley, and let him come on slowly, and we shall overtake you.  Get down, Yegor!  Go on; it’s all right. . . .”

Yegorushka got down from the box-seat.  Several hands caught him, lifted him high into the air, and he found himself on something big, soft, and rather wet with dew.  It seemed to him now as though the sky were quite close and the earth far away.

“Hey, take his little coat!” Deniska shouted from somewhere far below.

His coat and bundle flung up from far below fell close to Yegorushka.  Anxious not to think of anything, he quickly put his bundle under his head and covered himself with his coat, and stretching his legs out and shrinking a little from the dew, he laughed with content.

“Sleep, sleep, sleep, . . .” he thought.

“Don’t be unkind to him, you devils!” he heard Deniska’s voice below.

“Good-bye, lads; good luck to you,” shouted Kuzmitchov.  “I rely upon you!”

“Don’t you be uneasy, Ivan Ivanitch!”

Deniska shouted to the horses, the chaise creaked and started, not along the road, but somewhere off to the side.  For two minutes there was silence, as though the waggons were asleep and there was no sound except the clanking of the pails tied on at the back of the chaise as it slowly died away in the distance.  Then someone at the head of the waggons shouted: 

“Kiruha!  Sta-art!”

The foremost of the waggons creaked, then the second, then the third. . . .  Yegorushka felt the waggon he was on sway and creak also.  The waggons were moving.  Yegorushka took a tighter hold of the cord with which the bales were tied on, laughed again with content, shifted the cake in his pocket, and fell asleep just as he did in his bed at home. . . .

When he woke up the sun had risen, it was screened by an ancient barrow, and, trying to shed its light upon the earth, it scattered its beams in all directions and flooded the horizon with gold.  It seemed to Yegorushka that it was not in its proper place, as the day before it had risen behind his back, and now it was much more to his left. . . .  And the whole landscape was different.  There were no hills now, but on all sides, wherever one looked, there stretched the brown cheerless plain; here and there upon it small barrows rose up and rooks flew as they had done the day before.  The belfries and huts of some village showed white in the distance ahead; as it was Sunday the Little Russians were at home baking and cooking—­that could be seen by the smoke which rose from every chimney and hung, a dark blue