Ignat

An old watchman of about seventy at a winter hut on the post road, who coughs and talks constantly to himself, evidently a former railway man, since he narrates his own movements in engine-room commands ("Full speed ahead!", "Off the rails!"); owner of the yard-dog Arapka and her puppy Whitebrow, he twice drives off a wolf with a misfiring single-barreled gun and, at the story's end, disciplines the returned puppy for climbing in through the shed roof instead of the door.