Page:RussianFolkTales Afanasev 368pgs.djvu/314

298 Then the rich peasant began to think: "Heigh-ho! I shall also begin sowing in the winter; possibly I shall have corn as fine." So he waited to the very day on which the poor peasant in the previous year had sown his corn, went and took from his bins quarters of different sorts of corn, went out into the fields and scattered it all on the snow. He covered the fields entirely, but a storm arose at night, and mighty winds blew, and wafted all the corn from his land away on to the other fields. Then there came a fine spring, and the rich man went to his fields and saw them bare, and saw that his own land was naked and waste; there was not a single blade that appeared, and on all the other strips where there had been no ploughing and no sowing, you never saw such a fine green crop! Then the rich man began to think: "Lord, I have spent much on corn, and it has all been in vain, and my debtors have all neither ploughed nor sown, and their corn grows of itself. Needs I must be a great sinner!"