e time, took the matchbox out of his pocket and began lighting
match after match for no object: he lit it, blew it out, and threw
it under the table, and went on till all the matches were gone.

Meanwhile the air began to turn blue outside, the cocks began to
crow, but his head still ached, and there was an uproar in his ears
as though he were sitting under a railway bridge and hearing the
trains passing over his head. He got, somehow, into his coat and
cap; the saddle and the bundle of his purchases he could not find,
his knapsack was empty: it was not for nothing that someone had
scurried out of the room when he came in from the yard.

He took a poker from the kitchen to keep off the dogs, and went out
into the yard, leaving the door open. The snow-storm had subsided
and it was calm outside. . . . When he went out at the gate, the
white plain looked dead, and there was not a single bird in the
morning sky. On both sides of the road and in the distance there
were bluish patches of young copse.

Yergunov began thinking how he would be greeted at the hospital and
what the doctor would say to him; it was absolutely necessary to
think of that, and to prepare beforehand to answer questions he
would be asked, but this thought grew blurred and slipped away. He
walked along thinking of nothing but Lyubka, of the peasants with
whom he had passed the night; he remembered how, after Lyubka struck
him the second time, she had bent down to the floor for the quilt,
and how her loose hair had fallen on the floor. His mind was in a
maze, and he wondered why there were in the world doctors, hospital
assistants, merchants, clerks, and peasants instead of simple free
men? There are, to be sure, free birds, free beasts, a free Merik,
and they are not afraid of anyone, and don't need anyone! And whose
idea was it, who had decreed that one must get up in the morning,
dine at midday, go to bed in the evening; that a doctor takes
precedence of a hospital assistant; that one must live in rooms and
love only one's wife? And why not the contrary--dine at night and
sleep in the day? Ah, to jump on a horse without enquiring whose
it is, to ride races with the wind like a devil, over fields and
forests and ravines, to make love to girls, to mock at
everyone . . . .

Yergunov thrust the poker into the snow, pressed his forehead to
the cold white trunk of a birch-tree, and sank into thought; and
his grey, monotonous life, his wages, his subordin