is 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.

In front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved
a bright-colored line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was
being rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green
stubble. After the women came the men with pitchforks, and from
the gray rows there were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks.
To the left, carts were rumbling over the meadow that had been
already cleared, and one after another the haycocks vanished,
flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their place there were rising
heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the horses'
hind-quarters.

"What weather for haying! What hay it'll be!" said an old man,
squatting down beside Levin. "It's tea, not hay! It's like
scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!" he
added, pointing to the growing haycocks. "Since dinnertime
they've carried a good half of it."

"The last load, eh?" he shouted to a young peasant, wh