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 templating the caps on his fowling-piece. "Do you see that tall grass?" He pointed to an islet shading into a black green in the midst of the wet meadow which, already half mown, extended along the right bank of the river, "The marsh begins here directly in front of you—where it is so green. From there it extends to the right where those horses are going; there are the tussocks and you will find snipe there, and so on around this high grass clear up to the alders and the mill itself. That direction, you see where the ground is overflowed, that is the best place. I've killed as many as seventeen woodcock there. We will separate with the two dogs in different directions, and then we will meet at the mill."

"Well, who will go to the right, who to the left?" asked Stepan Arkadyevitch. "There is more room to the right; you two go that way and I will take the left," said he, with pretended indifference.

"Capital, we will shoot more than he does. Come on, come on, come on," cried Veslovsky.

Levin saw that he was in for it, so they started off together.

As soon as they struck into the marsh the dogs began to hunt round and darted off for the swamp. Levin well knew what that careful and indeterminate manoeuver of Laska's meant; he also knew the place, and he was on the lookout for a bevy of woodcock.

"Veslovsky, come in line, in line," he cried in a voice of anguish to his companion, who insisted in falling behind. Since the accidental discharge of the weapon at the Kolpensky marsh. Levin could not help taking an interest in the direction in which Veslovsky's gun-barrel was pointing.

"Now, I won't bother you, don't worry about me!"

But Levin could not help worrying, and he remembered Kitty's words as she said good-by to him: "Look out that you don't shoot one another."

Closer and closer ran the dogs, avoiding each other, each following her own scent; the expectation of starting up a woodcock was so strong that the squeak of