Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/786

 "How is it with you?" asked Levin, But there was no need of asking, because he could see his overflowing game-bag.

"Oh, just a trifle." He had fourteen birds. "What a splendid marsh. Veslovsky must have bothered you. Two can't hunt well with the same dog," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, to soften the effect of his triumph.

CHAPTER XI

Levin and Stepan Arkadyevitch reached the peasant's izba, where Levin always stopped when he was out hunting, Veslovsky was already there. He was laughing his merrily contagious laugh, sitting in the middle of the hut and clinging with both hands to a bench from which a soldier, the brother of their host, was pulling him in his efforts to haul off his muddy boots.

"I have only just got here. Ils ont été charmants. Imagine it—they gave me plenty to eat and drink. What bread, 't was marvelous. Délicieux. And such vodka I never tasted! And they utterly refused to take any payment. They kept saying: 'Drink it down,' or something like that."

"Why should they take money? They regarded you as a guest. Do you suppose they had vodka to sell?" asked the soldier, who at last succeeded in pulling off the wet boot together with the mud-stained stocking.

Notwithstanding the dirtiness of the izba, which the huntsmen and their dogs had tracked all over with mud, notwithstanding the smell of bog and gunpowder with which it was filled, and notwithstanding the absence of knives and forks, the three men drank their tea and ate their luncheon with appetites such as only hunting produces. After they had washed up and cleansed off the mud, they went to a hay-loft where the coachman had prepared them beds.

Although it was already dark, not one of the huntsmen felt any inclination to go to sleep. After they had indulged in various recollections and stories of shooting,