home the quicker.
Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a
couple of bricklayers talking noisily together as they strode along the
pavement. However, after walking a verst or so I began to meet men and
women taking baskets to market or going with empty barrels to fetch the
day's water supply; until at length, at the cross streets near the Arbat
Gate, where a pieman had set up his stall and a baker was just opening
his shop, I espied an old cabman shaking himself after indulging in a
nap on the box of his be-scratched old blue-painted, hobble-de-hoy wreck
of a drozhki. He seemed barely awake as he asked twenty copecks as the
fare to the monastery and back, but came to himself a moment afterwards,
just as I was about to get in, and, touching up his horse with the spare
end of the reins, started to drive off and leave me. "My horse wants
feeding," he growled, "I can't take you, barin.[Sir]"

With some difficulty and a promise of FORTY copecks I persuaded him to
stop. He eyed me narrowly as he pulled up, but nevertheless said: "Very
well. Get in, barin." I must confess that I had some qualms lest he
should drive me to a quiet corner somewhere, and then rob me, but I
caught hold of the collar of his ragged driving-coat, close to where his
wrinkled neck showed sadly lean above his hunched-up back, and climbed
on to the blue-painted, curved, rickety scat. As we set off along
Vozdvizhenka Street, I noticed that the back of the drozhki was covered
with a strip of the same greenish material as that of which his coat was
made. For some reason or another this reassured me, and I no longer felt
nervous of being taken to a quiet spot and robbed.

The sun had risen to a good height, and was gilding the cupolas of the
churches, when we arrived at the monastery. In the shade the frost had
not yet given, but in the open roadway muddy rivulets of water were
coursing along, and it was through fast-thawing mire that the horse went
clip-clopping his way. Alighting, and entering the monastery grounds, I
inquired of the first monk whom I met where I could find the priest whom
I was seeking.

"His cell is over there," replied the monk as he stopped a moment and
pointed towards a little building up to which a flight of steps led.

"I respectfully thank you," I said, and then fell to wondering what all
the monks (who at that moment began to come filing out of the church)
must be thinking of me as they glanced in my d