“Are we going to stay here much longer?” asks the old man.

No answer.  The motionless figure is evidently asleep.  The old man clears his throat impatiently and, shrinking from the penetrating damp, walks round the engine, and as he does so the brilliant light of the two engine lamps dazzles his eyes for an instant and makes the night even blacker to him; he goes to the station.

The platform and steps of the station are wet.  Here and there are white patches of freshly fallen melting snow.  In the station itself it is light and as hot as a steam-bath.  There is a smell of paraffin.  Except for the weighing-machine and a yellow seat on which a man wearing a guard’s uniform is asleep, there is no furniture in the place at all.  On the left are two wide-open doors.  Through one of them the telegraphic apparatus and a lamp with a green shade on it can be seen; through the other, a small room, half of it taken up by a dark cupboard.  In this room the head guard and the engine-driver are sitting on the window-sill.  They are both feeling a cap with their fingers and disputing.

“That’s not real beaver, it’s imitation,” says the engine-driver.  “Real beaver is not like that.  Five roubles would be a high price for the whole cap, if you care to know!”

“You know a great deal about it,...” the head guard says, offended.  “Five roubles, indeed!  Here, we will ask the merchant.  Mr. Malahin,” he says, addressing the old man, “what do you say:  is this imitation beaver or real?”

Old Malahin takes the cap into his hand, and with the air of a connoisseur pinches the fur, blows on it, sniffs at it, and a contemptuous smile lights up his angry face.

“It must be imitation!” he says gleefully.  “Imitation it is.”

A dispute follows.  The guard maintains that the cap is real beaver, and the engine-driver and Malahin try to persuade him that it is not.  In the middle of the argument the old man suddenly remembers the object of his coming.

“Beaver and cap is all very well, but the train’s standing still, gentlemen!” he says.  “Who is it we are waiting for?  Let us start!”

“Let us,” the guard agrees.  “We will smoke another cigarette and go on.  But there is no need to be in a hurry....  We shall be delayed at the next station anyway!”

“Why should we?”

“Oh, well....  We are too much behind time....  If you are late at one station you can’t help being delayed at the other stations to let the trains going the opposite way pass.  Whether we set off now or in the morning we shan’t be number fourteen.  We shall have to be number twenty-three.”

“And how do you make that out?”

“Well, there it is.”

Malahin looks at the guard, reflects, and mutters mechanically as though to himself: 

“God be my judge, I have reckoned it and even jotted it down in a notebook; we have wasted thirty-four hours standing still on the journey.  If you go on like this, either the cattle will die, or they won’t pay me two roubles for the meat when I do get there.  It’s not traveling, but ruination.”