e
a swan, rises in his seat, and more from habit than necessity brandishes
his whip. The mare cranes her neck, too, crooks her stick-like legs, and
hesitatingly sets of....

"Where are you shoving, you devil?" Iona immediately hears shouts from
the dark mass shifting to and fro before him. "Where the devil are you
going? Keep to the r-right!"

"You don't know how to drive! Keep to the right," says the officer
angrily.

A coachman driving a carriage swears at him; a pedestrian crossing
the road and brushing the horse's nose with his shoulder looks at him
angrily and shakes the snow off his sleeve. Iona fidgets on the box as
though he were sitting on thorns, jerks his elbows, and turns his eyes
about like one possessed as though he did not know where he was or why
he was there.

"What rascals they all are!" says the officer jocosely. "They are simply
doing their best to run up against you or fall under the horse's feet.
They must be doing it on purpose."

Iona looks as his fare and moves his lips.... Apparently he means to
say something, but nothing comes but a sniff.

"What?" inquires the officer.

Iona gives a wry smile, and straining his throat, brings out huskily:
"My son... er... my son died this week, sir."

"H'm! What did he die of?"

Iona turns his whole body round to his fare, and says:

"Who can tell! It must have been from fever.... He lay three days in
the hospital and then he died.... God's will."

"Turn round, you devil!" comes out of the darkness. "Have you gone
cracked, you old dog? Look where you are going!"

"Drive on! drive on!..." says the officer. "We shan't get there till
to-morrow going on like this. Hurry up!"

The sledge-driver cranes his neck again, rises in his seat, and with
heavy grace swings his whip. Several times he looks round at the
officer, but the latter keeps his eyes shut and is apparently
disinclined to listen. Putting his fare down at Vyborgskaya, Iona stops
by a restaurant, and again sits huddled up on the box.... Again
the wet snow paints him and his horse white. One hour passes, and then
another....

Three young men, two tall and thin, one short and hunchbacked, come up,
railing at each other and loudly stamping on the pavement with their
goloshes.

"Cabby, to the Police Bridge!" the hunchback cries in a cracked voice.
"The three of us,... twenty kopecks!"

Iona tugs at the reins and clicks to his horse. Twenty kopecks is not a
fair price, but he has no tho