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 could not tell whether he had lost them or left them on his table. There were three hundred and seventy rubles in the pocket-book, and he could not leave them so.

"Do you know, Levin, I could take your Cossack horse and gallop back to the house. It would be elegant!"

"Oh, no," replied Levin, who calculated that Vasenka's weight must be not less than two hundred and forty pounds; "my coachman can easily do the errand."

The coachman was sent back on the Cossack horse, and Levin drove on with the pair.

CHAPTER IX

", what's our line of march? Give us a good idea of it," said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

"This is my plan: we will go first to Gvozdevo. Just this side of Gvozdevo is a snipe marsh, but on the other side of Gvozdevo extend splendid woodcock marshes, and there'll be game there. It 's hot now, but toward the cool of the day—it 's twenty versts from here—we will try the field. We will spend the night there, and then to-morrow we will strike into the great marshes."

"But isn't there anything on the way?"

"Yes, but it would delay us, and it is too hot. There are two splendid little places, but it is hardly worth while."

It was Levin's intention to attack these places, but as they were near home, he could go there at any time, and as they were small he thought that three hunters were too many. Therefore, he prevaricated when he said that it was hardly worth while.

When they came up to the little marsh. Levin was proposing to drive by; but Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a huntsman, immediately saw the water-soaked ground which was visible from the road.

"Shan't we try that?" he asked, pointing to the marsh.