untry. Swaying rhythmically with the ambling paces of his good
little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh scent of the snow and
the air, as he rode through his forest over the crumbling, wasted
snow, still left in parts, and covered with dissolving tracks, he
rejoiced over every tree, with the moss reviving on its bark and
the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came out of the forest,
in the immense plain before him, his grass fields stretched in an
unbroken carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only
spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of melting
snow. He was not put out of temper even by the sight of the
peasants' horses and colts trampling down his young grass (he
told a peasant he met to drive them out), nor by the sarcastic
and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met on the way, and
asked, "Well, Ipat, shall we soon be sowing?" "We must get the
ploughing done first, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," answered Ipat.
The further he rode, the happier he became, and plans for the
land rose to his mind each better than the last; to plant all his
fields with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow
should not lie under them; to divide them up into six fields of
arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard at
the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct
movable pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And
then eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and
four hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.

Absorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the
hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the
laborers who had been sent to sow clover. A cart with the seed
in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the middle of the
crop, and the winter corn had been torn up by the wheels and
trampled by the horse. Both the laborers were sitting in the
hedge, probably smoking a pipe together. The earth in the cart,
with which the seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but
crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the
laborer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to work
sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the laborers
Levin seldom lost his temper. When Vassily came up, Levin told
him to lead the horse to the hedge.

"It's all right, sir, it'll spring up again," responded Vassily.

"Please don't argue," said Levin, "but do as you're told."

"Yes, s