weather! One cannot keep the road. Better stay here and wait; perhaps
the hurricane will cease and the sky will clear, and we shall find the
road by starlight."

His coolness gave me courage, and I resigned myself to pass the night on
the steppe, commending myself to the care of Providence, when suddenly
the stranger, seating himself on the driver's seat, said--

"Grace be to God, there _is_ a house not far off. Turn to the light, and
go on."

"Why should I go to the right?" retorted my driver, ill-humouredly.

"How do you know where the road is that you are so ready to say, 'Other
people's horses, other people's harness--whip away!'"

It seemed to me the driver was right.

"Why," said I to the stranger, "do you think a house is not far off?"

"The wind blew from that direction," replied he, "and I smelt smoke, a
sure sign that a house is near."

His cleverness and the acuteness of his sense of smell alike astonished
me. I bid the driver go where the other wished. The horses ploughed
their way through the deep snow. The _kibitka_ advanced slowly,
sometimes upraised on a drift, sometimes precipitated into a ditch, and
swinging from side to side. It was very like a boat on a stormy sea.

Savéliitch groaned deeply as every moment he fell upon me. I lowered the