rnt, stern and
brooding face. It is very possible that the old man was not stern
and not brooding, but his red eyelids and his sharp long nose gave
his face a stern frigid expression such as is common with people
in the habit of continually thinking of serious things in solitude.
Like Father Christopher he was wearing a wide-brimmed top-hat, not
like a gentleman's, but made of brown felt, and in shape more like
a cone with the top cut off than a real top-hat. Probably from a
habit acquired in cold winters, when he must more than once have
been nearly frozen as he trudged beside the waggons, he kept slapping
his thighs and stamping with his feet as he walked. Noticing that
Yegorushka was awake, he looked at him and said, shrugging his
shoulders as though from the cold:

"Ah, you are awake, youngster! So you are the son of Ivan Ivanitch?"

"No; his nephew. . . ."

"Nephew of Ivan Ivanitch? Here I have taken off my boots and am
hopping along barefoot. My feet are bad; they are swollen, and it's
easier without my boots . . . easier, youngster . . . without boots,
I mean. . . . So you are his nephew? He is a good man; no harm in
him. . . . God give him health. . . . No harm in him . . . I mean
Ivan Ivanitch. . . . He has gone to the Molokans'. . . . O Lord,
have mercy upon us!"

The old man talked, too, as though it were very cold, pausing and
not opening his mouth properly; and he mispronounced the labial
consonants, stuttering over them as though his lips were frozen.
As he talked to Yegorushka he did not once smile, and he seemed
stern.

Two waggons ahead of them there walked a man wearing a long
reddish-brown coat, a cap and high boots with sagging bootlegs and
carrying a whip in his hand. This was not an old man, only about
forty. When he looked round Yegorushka saw a long red face with a
scanty goat-beard and a spongy looking swelling under his right
eye. Apart from this very ugly swelling, there was another peculiar
thing about him which caught the eye at once: in his left hand he
carried a whip, while he waved the right as though he were conducting
an unseen choir; from time to time he put the whip under his arm,
and then he conducted with both hands and hummed something to
himself.

The next driver was a long rectilinear figure with extremely sloping
shoulders and a back as flat as a board. He held himself as stiffly
erect as though he were marching or had swallowed a yard measure.
His hands did not swing