“Sledge to Vyborgskaya!” Iona hears.  “Sledge!”

Iona starts, and through his snow-plastered eyelashes sees an officer in a military overcoat with a hood over his head.

“To Vyborgskaya,” repeats the officer.  “Are you asleep?  To Vyborgskaya!”

In token of assent Iona gives a tug at the reins which sends cakes of snow flying from the horse’s back and shoulders.  The officer gets into the sledge.  The sledge-driver clicks to the horse, cranes his neck like a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes his whip.  The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and hesitatingly sets of....

“Where are you shoving, you devil?” Iona immediately hears shouts from the dark mass shifting to and fro before him.  “Where the devil are you going?  Keep to the r-right!”

“You don’t know how to drive!  Keep to the right,” says the officer angrily.

A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing the road and brushing the horse’s nose with his shoulder looks at him angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve.  Iona fidgets on the box as though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns his eyes about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why he was there.

“What rascals they all are!” says the officer jocosely.  “They are simply doing their best to run up against you or fall under the horse’s feet.  They must be doing it on purpose.”

Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips....  Apparently he means to say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.

“What?” inquires the officer.

Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily:  “My son... er... my son died this week, sir.”

“H’m!  What did he die of?”

Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says: 

“Who can tell!  It must have been from fever....  He lay three days in the hospital and then he died....  God’s will.”

“Turn round, you devil!” comes out of the darkness.  “Have you gone cracked, you old dog?  Look where you are going!”

“Drive on! drive on!...” says the officer.  “We shan’t get there till to-morrow going on like this.  Hurry up!”

The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with heavy grace swings his whip.  Several times he looks round at the officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently disinclined to listen.  Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box....  Again the wet snow paints him and his horse white.  One hour passes, and then another....

Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up, railing at each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their goloshes.

“Cabby, to the Police Bridge!” the hunchback cries in a cracked voice.  “The three of us,... twenty kopecks!”