In the middle of July the elder of the village on Levin's

sister's estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to

Levin to report on how things were going there and on the hay.

The chief source of income on his sister's estate was from the

riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been bought by

the peasants for twenty roubles the three acres. When Levin took

over the management of the estate, he thought on examining the

grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed the price at

twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not give

that price, and, as Levin suspected, kept off other purchasers.

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Then Levin had driven over himself, and arranged to have the

grass cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a

certain proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every

hindrance they could in the way of this new arrangement, but it

was carried out, and the first year the meadows had yielded a

profit almost double. The previous year--which was the third

year--the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the

arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same system. This

year the peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of the

hay crop, and the village elder had come now to announce that the

hay had been cut, and that, fearing rain, they had invited the

counting-house clerk over, had divided the crop in his presence,

and had raked together eleven stacks as the owner's share. From

the vague answers to his question how much hay had been cut on

the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village elder who had

made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone of the

peasant, Levin perceived that there was something wrong in the

division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself

to look into the matter.

Arriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the

cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother's

wet-nurse, Levin went to see the old man in his bee-house,

wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay.

Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old man, gave Levin a very warm

welcome, showed him all he was doing, told him everything about

his bees and the swarms of that year; but gave vague and

unwilling answers to Levin's inquiries about the mowing. This

confirmed Levin still more in his suspicions. He went to the

hay fields and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not

possibly contain fifty wagon-loads each, and to convict the

peasants Levin ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be

brought up directly, to lift one stack, and carry it into the

barn. There turned out to be only thirty-two loads in the stack.

In spite of the village elder's assertions about the

compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the

stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in the

fear of God, Levin stuck to his point that the hay had been

divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not

accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged

dispute the matter was decided by the peasants taking these

eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments

and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon.

When the last of the hay had been divided, Levin, intrusting the

superintendence of the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down

on a haycock marked off by a stake of willow, and looked

admiringly at the meadow swarming with peasants.




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