Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/353

 We'll eat after dark. Come on!" cried several voices; and, even while still munching their bread, they got to work again.

"Well, boys, keep up good hearts!" said Sef, setting off almost on the run.

"Come, come!" cried the old man, hastening after him and easily outstripping him. "I am first. Look out!"

Old and young mowed as if they were racing; and yet, with all their haste, they did not spoil their work, but the windrows lay in neat and regular swaths.

The triangle was finished in five minutes. The last mowers had just finished their line, when the first, throwing their kaftans over their shoulders, started down the road to the Mashkin Verkh.

The sun was just hovering over the tree-tops, when, with rattling cans, they came to the little wooded ravine of Mashkin Verkh.

The grass here was as high as a man's waist, tender, succulent, thick, and variegated with the flower called Ivan-da-Marya.

After a short parley, to decide whether to take it across, or lengthwise, an experienced mower, Prokhor Yermilin, a huge, black-bearded muzhik, went over it first. He took it lengthwise, and came back in his track; and then all followed him, going along the hill above the hollow, and skirting the wood. The sun was setting. The light was going behind the forest. The dew was already falling. Only the mowers on the ridge were in the sun; but down in the hollow, where the mist was beginning to rise, and behind the slope, they went in fresh, dewy shade.

The work went on. The grass, cut off with a juicy sound, and falling evenly, lay in high windrows. The mowers came close together from all sides as the rows converged, rattling their drinking-cups, sometimes hitting their scythes together, working with joyful shouts, rallying one another.

Levin still kept his place between the short young man and the elder. The elder, with his sheepskin