the particulars about his bees, and how they swarmed this year; but when Levin asked him about the hay, he gave vague and unsatisfactory answers. This still more confirmed Levin in his suspicions.
He went to the meadows, and, on examination of the hayricks, found that they could not contain fifty loads each, as the muzhiks said. So in order to give the peasants a lesson he had one of the carts which they had used as a measure to be brought, and ordered all the hay from one of the ricks to be carried into the shed.
The hayrick was found to contain only thirty-two loads. Notwithstanding the starosta's protestations that the hay was measured right, and that it must have got pressed down in the cart; notwithstanding the fact that he called God to witness that it was all done in the most godly manner,—Levin insisted on it that, as the division had been made without his orders, he would not accept the hayricks as equivalent to fifty loads each.
After long parleys, it was decided that the muzhiks should take eleven of these hayricks for their share, but that the master's should be measured over again. The colloquy and the division of the hayricks lasted until the mid-afternoon luncheon hour. When the last of the hay had been divided. Levin, confiding the care of the work to the bookkeeper, sat down on one of the hayricks which was marked by a laburnum stake, and enjoyed the spectacle of the meadows alive with the busy peasantry.
Before him, at the bend of the river beyond the marsh, he saw the peasant women in a variegated line, and heard their ringing voices as they gossiped together, while raking into long brown ramparts the hay scattered over the bright green aftermath. Behind the women came the men with pitchforks turning the windrows into wide, high-swelling hayricks.
Toward the left across the meadow, already cleared of the hay, came the creaking telyegas, or peasant carts, and one by one, as the hayricks were lifted on the point of monstrous forks, disappeared, and their places were
