intense when we quitted the threshold, and the
thermometer had fallen several degrees during the last half-hour;
the wind had also increased, and it howled and whistled against the
eaves of the farm-house, bearing millions of minute snowy flakes
before it in its course. Presently the sound of a little stamping on
the bottom of the sleigh announced to me that the cold had penetrated
to my companion's feet, and that he was endeavouring to keep up the
circulation.

Very soon that so-called "pins-and-needles" sensation, recalling
some snow-balling episodes of my boyish days, began once more to make
itself felt, and I found myself commencing a sort of double-shuffle
against the boards of the vehicle. The snow was falling in thick
flakes, and with great difficulty our driver could keep the track,
his jaded horses sinking sometimes up to the traces in the rapidly
forming drifts, and floundering heavily along the now thoroughly
hidden road. The cracks of his whip sounded like pistol-shots against
their jaded flanks, and volumes of invectives issued from his lips.

"Oh, sons of animals!"--[whack].

"Oh, spoiled one!"--[whack]. This to a brute which looked as if
he never had eaten a good feed of corn in his life. "Oh, woolly
ones!" [whack! whack! whack!].

"O Lord God!" This as we were all upset into a snowdrift, the sleigh
being three parts overturned, and our Jehu precipitated in the
opposite direction.

"How far are we from the next halting-place?" suddenly inquired
my companion, with an ejaculation which showed that even his good
temper had given way under the cold and our situation.

"Only four versts, one of noble birth," replied the struggling Jehu,
who was busily engaged endeavouring to right the half-overturned
sleigh. A Russian verst about night-fall, and under such conditions
as I have endeavoured to point out to the reader, is an unknown
quantity. A Scotch mile and a bit, an Irish league, a Spanish _legua_,
or the German _stunde_, are at all times calculated to call forth
the wrath of the traveller, but in no way equal to the first-named
division of distance. For the verst is barely two-thirds of an
English mile, and when, after driving yet for an hour, we were
told that there were still two versts more before we could arrive
at our halting-place, it began fully to dawn upon my friend that
either our driver's knowledge of distance, or otherwise his veracity,
was at fault.

At last we reached a long, struggli