ad time to load again, sent two charges of
small-shot into the water. Stepan Arkadyevitch picked up his
snipe, and with sparkling eyes looked at Levin.

"Well, now let us separate," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, and
limping on his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and
whistling to his dog, he walked off in one direction. Levin and
Veslovsky walked in the other.

It always happened with Levin that when his first shots were a
failure he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole
day. So it was that day. The snipe showed themselves in
numbers. They kept flying up from just under the dogs, from
under the sportsmen's legs, and Levin might have retrieved his
ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he felt disgraced in
the eyes of Veslovsky, who kept popping away merrily and
indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest
abashed by his ill success. Levin, in feverish haste, could not
restrain himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by
shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed
to understand this. She began looking more languidly, and gazed
back at the sportsmen, as it were, with perplexity or reproach in
her eyes. Shots followed shots in rapid succession. The smoke
of the powder hung about the sportsmen, while in the great roomy
net of the game bag there were only three light little snipe.
And of these one had been killed by Veslovsky alone, and one by
both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side of the
marsh came the sound of Stepan Arkadyevitch's shots, not
frequent, but, as Levin fancied, well-directed, for almost after
each they heard "Krak, Krak, _apporte_!"

This excited Levin still more. The snipe were floating
continually in the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings
close to the earth, and their harsh cries high in the air, could
be heard on all sides; the snipe that had risen first and flown
up into the air, settled again before the sportsmen. Instead of
two hawks there were now dozens of them hovering with shrill
cries over the marsh.

After walking through the larger half of the marsh, Levin and
Veslovsky reached the place where the peasants' mowing-grass was
divided into long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one
place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown through
it. Half of these strips had already been mown.

Though there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut
part as the cut part, Levi