It was not far away, but my repeated and vigorous knocks upon the door of the izba (cottage), ornamented with the imperial eagle and the striped pole, received no response.  I pushed open the big gate of the courtyard alongside, and entered.  Half the court was roofed over with thatch.  In the far corner, divorced wagon bodies, running-gear, and harnesses lay heaped on the earth.  A horse, which was hitched to something unsubstantial among those fragments, came forward to welcome me.  A short row of wagon members which had escaped divorce, and were united in wheeling order, stood along the high board fence.  In one of them, a rough wooden cart, shaped somewhat like a barrel sawed in two lengthwise, pillowed on straw, but with his legs hanging down in an uncomfortable attitude, lay my faithless postboy (he was about forty years of age) fast asleep.  The neighboring vehicle, which I divined to be the one intended for us, was in possession of chickens.  A new-laid egg bore witness to their wakefulness and industry.

While I was engaged in an endeavor to rouse my should-be coachman, by tugging at his sleeve and pushing his boots in the most painful manner I could devise, a good-looking peasant woman made her tardy appearance at the side door of the adjoining izba, and seemed to enjoy the situation in an impartial, impersonal way.  The horse thrust his muzzle gently into his master’s face and roused him for me, and, in return, was driven away.

I demanded an explanation.  Extracted by bits in conversational spirals, it proved to be that he had decided that the carriage needed three horses, which he had known all along; and, chiefly, that he had desired to sleep upon a little scheme for exploiting the strangers.  How long he had intended to pursue his slumberous meditations it is impossible to say.

He dragged me through all the mazes of that bargain once more.  Evidently, bargaining was of even stricter etiquette than my extensive previous acquaintance had led me to suspect; and I had committed the capital mistake of not complying with this ancestral custom in the beginning.  I agreed to three horses, and stipulated, on my side, that fresh straw should replace the chickens’ nest, and that we should set out at once,—­not saytchas but sooner, “this very minute.”

I turned to go.  A fresh difficulty arose.  He would not go unless I would pay for three relays.  He brought out the government regulations and amendments,—­all that had been issued during the century, I should think.  He stood over me while I read them, and convinced myself that his “Yay Bogu” (God is my witness) was accurately placed.  The price of relays was, in reality, fixed by law; but though over-affirmation had now aroused my suspicions, in my ignorance of the situation I could not espy the loophole of trickery in which I was to be noosed, and I agreed once more.  More quibbling.  He would not stir unless he were allowed to drive the same horses the whole distance, though paid for three relays, because all the horses would be away harvesting, and so forth and so on.  Goaded to assert myself in some manner, to put an end to these interminable hagglings, I asserted what I did not know.