Page:Tolstoy - A Great Iniquity.djvu/14

6 “Well, according to what I have.”

“How much have you?”

“I’ve scraped together fifteen roubles. But what can you buy at the present time for fifteen roubles?”

“A knacker’s beast,” put in another peasant.

“In whose mine do you work?” I asked, glancing at his trousers stretched at the knee and coloured with red clay.

“In Komaroff’s, Ivan Komaroffs.”

“Why have you made so little?”

“Oh, I was working for half profit.”

“How much did you earn?” I asked.

“Two roubles a week or even less. What can one do? Bread didn’t last till Christmas. We can’t buy enough.”

A little further, a young peasant was leading a sleek, well fed horse to sell.

“Nice horse,” said I.

“Couldn’t be better,” said he, thinking me a buyer. “Good for ploughing and driving.”

“Then why do you sell it?”

“I can’t use it. I’ve only two allotments. I can manage them with one horse. I’ve kept them both over the winter, and I’m sorry enough for it. The cattle have eaten up everything, and we want money to pay the rent.”

“From whom do you rent?”

“From Maria Ivanovna; thanks be to her, she let us have it. Otherwise it would have been the end of us.”

“What are the terms?”

“She fleeces us of fourteen roubles. But where else can we go? So we take it.”

A woman passed driving along with a boy wearing a little cap. She knew me, clambered out, and offered me her boy for service. The boy