KASSYAN OF FAIR SPRINGS
'But the axle is broken.'
'It is broken; but we will get to the settlement . . . at a walking pace, of course. Over here, beyond the copse, on the right, is a settlement; they call it Yudino.'
'And do you think we can get there?'
My coachman did not vouchsafe me a reply.
'I had better walk,' I said.
'As you like . . .' And he flourished his whip. The horses started.
We did succeed in getting to the settlement, though the right front wheel was almost off, and turned in a very strange way. On one hillock it almost flew off, but my coachman shouted in a voice of exasperation, and we descended it in safety.
Yudino settlement consisted of six little low-pitched huts, the walls of which had already begun to warp out of the perpendicular, though they had certainly not been long built; the back-yards of some of the huts were not even fenced in with a hedge. As we drove into this settlement we did not meet a single living soul; there were no hens even to be seen in the street, and no dogs, but one black crop-tailed cur, which at our approach leaped hurriedly out of a perfectly dry and empty trough, to which it must have been driven by thirst, and at once, without barking, rushed headlong under a gate. I went up to the first hut, opened the door into the outer room, and called for the master of the house. No one answered me. I
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