are licking the hoar frost on the walls, and when Malachin goes
up to them they begin licking his cold fur jacket. From their clear,
tearful eyes it can be seen that they are exhausted by thirst and the
jolting of the train, that they are hungry and miserable.

"It's a nice job taking you by rail, you wretched brutes!" mutters
Malahin. "I could wish you were dead to get it over! It makes me sick to
look at you!"

At midday the train stops at a big station where, according to the
regulations, there was drinking water provided for cattle.

Water is given to the cattle, but the bullocks will not drink it: the
water is too cold....

* * * * *

Two more days and nights pass, and at last in the distance in the murky
fog the city comes into sight. The journey is over. The train comes
to a standstill before reaching the town, near a goods' station. The
bullocks, released from the van, stagger and stumble as though they were
walking on slippery ice.

Having got through the unloading and veterinary inspection, Malahin and
Yasha take up their quarters in a dirty, cheap hotel in the outskirts
of the town, in the square in which the cattle-market is held. Their
lodgings are filthy and their food is disgusting, unlike what they
ever have at home; they sleep to the harsh strains of a wretched steam
hurdy-gurdy which plays day and night in the restaurant under their
lodging.

The old man spends his time from morning till night going about looking
for purchasers, and Yasha sits for days in the hotel room, or goes out
into the street to look at the town. He sees the filthy square heaped
up with dung, the signboards of restaurants, the turreted walls of a
monastery in the fog. Sometimes he runs across the street and looks into
the grocer's shop, admires the jars of cakes of different colors, yawns,
and lazily saunters back to his room. The city does not interest him.

At last the bullocks are sold to a dealer. Malahin hires drovers. The
cattle are divided into herds, ten in each, and driven to the other end
of the town. The bullocks, exhausted, go with drooping heads through the
noisy streets, and look indifferently at what they see for the first and
last time in their lives. The tattered drovers walk after them, their
heads drooping too. They are bored.... Now and then some drover
starts out of his brooding, remembers that there are cattle in front
of him intrusted to his charge, and to show that he is doing his duty
brings a s