ded to buy the land individually, each according
to his means; and the lady agreed to this plan as she had to the other.

Presently Pahom heard that a neighbor of his was buying fifty acres,
and that the lady had consented to accept one half in cash and to wait a
year for the other half. Pahom felt envious.

"Look at that," thought he, "the land is all being sold, and I shall get
none of it." So he spoke to his wife.

"Other people are buying," said he, "and we must also buy twenty acres
or so. Life is becoming impossible. That steward is simply crushing us
with his fines."

So they put their heads together and considered how they could manage to
buy it. They had one hundred roubles laid by. They sold a colt, and one
half of their bees; hired out one of their sons as a laborer, and took
his wages in advance; borrowed the rest from a brother-in-law, and so
scraped together half the purchase money.

Having done this, Pahom chose out a farm of forty acres, some of
it wooded, and went to the lady to bargain for it. They came to an
agreement, and he shook hands with her upon it, and paid her a deposit
in advance. Then they went to town and signed the deeds; he paying half
the price down, and undertaking to pay the remainder within two years.

So now Pahom had land of his own. He borrowed seed, and sowed it on the
land he had bought. The harvest was a good one, and within a year he had
managed to pay off his debts both to the lady and to his brother-in-law.
So he became a landowner, ploughing and sowing his own land, making hay
on his own land, cutting his own trees, and feeding his cattle on his
own pasture. When he went out to plough his fields, or to look at his
growing corn, or at his grass meadows, his heart would fill with joy.
The grass that grew and the flowers that bloomed there, seemed to him
unlike any that grew elsewhere. Formerly, when he had passed by that
land, it had appeared the same as any other land, but now it seemed
quite different.

III

So Pahom was well contented, and everything would have been right if the
neighboring peasants would only not have trespassed on his corn-fields
and meadows. He appealed to them most civilly, but they still went on:
now the Communal herdsmen would let the village cows stray into his
meadows; then horses from the night pasture would get among his corn.
Pahom turned them out again and again, and forgave their owners, and
for a long time he forbore from prosec