‘Why, we must let the horse take its own way,’ said Nikita. ‘He will take us right. Let me have the reins.’

Vasili Andreevich gave him the reins, the more willingly because his hands were beginning to feel frozen in his thick gloves.

Nikita took the reins, but only held them, trying not to shake them and rejoicing at his favourite’s sagacity. And indeed the clever horse, turning first one ear and then the other now to one side and then to the other, began to wheel round.

‘The one thing he can’t do is to talk,’ Nikita kept saying. ‘See what he is doing! Go on, go on! You know best. That’s it, that’s it!’

The wind was now blowing from behind and it felt warmer.