peasantry, bustling about in the dark and dusty barn, and strange ideas came into his mind: —
"Why is all this done?" he asked himself. "Why am I standing here? Why am I compelling them to work, and why are they working so hard? Why are they doing their best in my presence? Why is my old friend Matriona putting in so with all her might? I cured her when a beam fell on her at the fire," he said to himself, as he looked at a hideous old baba, who was walking with bare, sunburned feet across the hard, uneven soil, and was plying the rake vigorously. "She got well then. But if not to-day or to-morrow, then in ten years, she must be borne to her grave, and there will be nothing left of her, nor of that pretty girl in red, who is husking corn with such graceful, swift motions. They will bury her. And that dappled gelding will soon die," he thought, as he looked at the horse, breathing painfully with distended nostrils and heavily sagging belly, as it struggled up the ever descending treadmill. "They will carry him off. And Feodor, the machine-tender, with his curling beard, full of chaff, and his white shoulder showing through a tear in his shirt — they will carry him off too. But now he gathers up the sheaves, and gives his commands, and shouts to the women, and, with quick motions, arranges the belt on the machine. And it will be the same with me. They will carry me away, and nothing of me will be left. Why?"
And, in the midst of his meditations, he mechanically took out his watch to calculate how much they threshed in an hour. It was his duty to do this, so that he could pay the men fairly for their day's work.
"So far, only three ricks," he said to himself; and he went to the machine-tender, and, trying to make his voice heard above the racket, told him to work faster.
"You put in too much at once, Feodor; you see it stops it, so it wastes time. Do it more regularly."
Feodor, his face black with dust and sweat, shouted back some unintelligible reply, but entirely failed to carry out Levin's directions.
