mall head, and the oval of
her comely face was as shapely as an egg, and white with the transparent
whiteness seen when the hands of a housewife hold a new-laid egg to
the light to let the sun's rays filter through its shell. The same tint
marked the maiden's ears where they glowed in the sunshine, and,
in short, what with the tears in her wide-open, arresting eyes, she
presented so attractive a picture that our hero bestowed upon it more
than a passing glance before he turned his attention to the hubbub which
was being raised among the horses and the coachmen.

"Back out, you rook of Nizhni Novgorod!" the strangers' coachman
shouted. Selifan tightened his reins, and the other driver did the same.
The horses stepped back a little, and then came together again--this
time getting a leg or two over the traces. In fact, so pleased did the
skewbald seem with his new friends that he refused to stir from the
melee into which an unforeseen chance had plunged him. Laying his muzzle
lovingly upon the neck of one of his recently-acquired acquaintances,
he seemed to be whispering something in that acquaintance's ear--and
whispering pretty nonsense, too, to judge from the way in which that
confidant kept shaking his ears.

At length peasants from a village which happened to be near the scene of
the accident tackled the mess; and since a spectacle of that kind is to
the Russian muzhik what a newspaper or a club-meeting is to the German,
the vehicles soon became the centre of a crowd, and the village denuded
even of its old women and children. The traces were disentangled, and a
few slaps on the nose forced the skewbald to draw back a little; after
which the teams were straightened out and separated. Nevertheless,
either sheer obstinacy or vexation at being parted from their new
friends caused the strange team absolutely to refuse to move a leg.
Their driver laid the whip about them, but still they stood as though
rooted to the spot. At length the participatory efforts of the peasants
rose to an unprecedented degree of enthusiasm, and they shouted in an
intermittent chorus the advice, "Do you, Andrusha, take the head of the
trace horse on the right, while Uncle Mitai mounts the shaft horse. Get
up, Uncle Mitai." Upon that the lean, long, and red-bearded Uncle Mitai
mounted the shaft horse; in which position he looked like a village
steeple or the winder which is used to raise water from wells. The
coachman whipped up his steeds afres