“If it’s too much, don’t take them.  There’s no compulsion, merchant.”

When the travellers were ready to start, they were detained for a minute.  Kuzka had lost his cap.

“Little swine, where did you put it?” Matvey Savitch roared angrily.  “Where is it?”

Kuzka’s face was working with terror; he ran up and down near the cart, and not finding it there, ran to the gate and then to the shed.  The old woman and Sofya helped him look.

“I’ll pull your ears off!” yelled Matvey Savitch.  “Dirty brat!”

The cap was found at the bottom of the cart.

Kuzka brushed the hay off it with his sleeve, put it on, and timidly he crawled into the cart, still with an expression of terror on his face as though he were afraid of a blow from behind.

Matvey Savitch crossed himself.  The driver gave a tug at the reins and the cart rolled out of the yard.

THE POST

It was three o’clock in the night.  The postman, ready to set off, in his cap and his coat, with a rusty sword in his hand, was standing near the door, waiting for the driver to finish putting the mail bags into the cart which had just been brought round with three horses.  The sleepy postmaster sat at his table, which was like a counter; he was filling up a form and saying: 

“My nephew, the student, wants to go to the station at once.  So look here, Ignatyev, let him get into the mail cart and take him with you to the station:  though it is against the regulations to take people with the mail, what’s one to do?  It’s better for him to drive with you free than for me to hire horses for him.”

“Ready!” they heard a shout from the yard.

“Well, go then, and God be with you,” said the postmaster.  “Which driver is going?”

“Semyon Glazov.”

“Come, sign the receipt.”

The postman signed the receipt and went out.  At the entrance of the post-office there was the dark outline of a cart and three hors es.  The horses were standing still except that one of the tracehorses kept uneasily shifting from one leg to the other and tossing its head, making the bell clang from time to time.  The cart with the mail bags looked like a patch of darkness.  Two silhouettes were moving lazily beside it:  the student with a portmanteau in his hand and a driver.  The latter was smoking a short pipe; the light of the pipe moved about in the darkness, dying away and flaring up again; for an instant it lighted up a bit of a sleeve, then a shaggy moustache and big copper-red nose, then stern-looking, overhanging eyebrows.  The postman pressed down the mail bags with his hands, laid his sword on them and jumped into the cart.  The student clambered irresolutely in after him, and accidentally touching him with his elbow, said timidly and politely:  “I beg your pardon.”

The pipe went out.  The postmaster came out of the post-office just as he was, in his waistcoat and slippers; shrinking from the night dampness and clearing his throat, he walked beside the cart and said: