Grigory turned back and lashed the horse with all his might.  The road grew worse and worse every hour.  Now he could not see the yoke at all.  Now and then the sledge ran into a young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner’s hands and flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision was white and whirling again.

“To live over again,” thought the turner.

He remembered that forty years ago Matryona had been young, handsome, merry, that she had come of a well-to-do family.  They had married her to him because they had been attracted by his handicraft.  All the essentials for a happy life had been there, but the trouble was that, just as he had got drunk after the wedding and lay sprawling on the stove, so he had gone on without waking up till now.  His wedding he remembered, but of what happened after the wedding—­for the life of him he could remember nothing, except perhaps that he had drunk, lain on the stove, and quarreled.  Forty years had been wasted like that.

The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to turn gray.  It was getting dusk.

“Where am I going?” the turner suddenly bethought him with a start.  “I ought to be thinking of the burial, and I am on the way to the hospital....  It as is though I had gone crazy.”

Grigory turned round again, and again lashed his horse.  The little nag strained its utmost and, with a snort, fell into a little trot.  The turner lashed it on the back time after time....  A knocking was audible behind him, and though he did not look round, he knew it was the dead woman’s head knocking against the sledge.  And the snow kept turning darker and darker, the wind grew colder and more cutting....

“To live over again!” thought the turner.  “I should get a new lathe, take orders,... give the money to my old woman....”

And then he dropped the reins.  He looked for them, tried to pick them up, but could not—­his hands would not work....

“It does not matter,” he thought, “the horse will go of itself, it knows the way.  I might have a little sleep now....  Before the funeral or the requiem it would be as well to get a little rest....”

The turner closed his eyes and dozed.  A little later he heard the horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him something dark like a hut or a haystack....

He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed better to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep.

He woke up in a big room with painted walls.  Bright sunlight was streaming in at the windows.  The turner saw people facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a respectable man who knew how things should be done.

“A requiem, brothers, for my old woman,” he said.  “The priest should be told....”

“Oh, all right, all right; lie down,” a voice cut him short.