Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/52

 34 "We have eaten it up, and now not a crumb is left. I will buy a horse in the fall, 'r Grace."

You shall not dare sell this horse!"

"If so, 'r Grace, what kind of a life will it be? There is no bread, and I must not sell anything," he answered sideways, twitching his lips, and suddenly casting a bold glance upon the master's face. "It means, we shall have to starve."

"Look here, man!" cried Nekhlyúdov, pale with anger, and experiencing a feeling of personal hatred for the peasant. "I will not keep such peasants as you. It will go hard with you."

"Such will be your will, 'r Grace," he answered, covering his eyes with a feigned expression of humility, "if I have not served you right. And yet, nobody has noticed any vices in me. Of course, if 'r Grace is displeased with me, 'r Grace will do as you wish; only I do not know why I should suffer."

"I will tell you why: because your yard is not fenced in, your manure not ploughed up, your fences are broken, and you sit at home and smoke a pipe, and do not work; because you do not give your mother, who has turned the whole farm over to you, a piece of bread, and permit your wife to strike her, and have treated her so badly that she has come to me to complain about you."

"I beg your pardon, 'r Grace, I do not know what pipes you are speaking of," Yukhvánka answered, confusedly, apparently very much insulted by the accusation of smoking a pipe. "It is easy to say anything about a man."

"There you are lying again! I saw myself—"

"How would I dare to lie to 'r Grace?"

Nekhlyúdov was silent, and, biting his lips, paced the yard. Yukhvánka stood in one spot and, without raising his eyes, watched his master's feet.

"Listen, Epifán," said Nekhlyúdov, in a voice of childlike gentleness, stopping in front of the peasant, and en-