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Rh he went into town, completed the purchase, paid half the money down, engaged to pay off the rest in two years, and—was left alone with his land. Next, he borrowed some more money from his brother-in-law, and bought seed. He sowed the land he had purchased, and things went well with him. In a single year he paid off both his landlady and his brother-in-law. Pakhom was now a proprietor. It was his own land that he ploughed and sowed; it was upon his own land that he mowed hay, cut firewood, and grazed cattle. When Pcikhom went out upon his land, which was his for ever and ever, to plough, or watch the sprouting crops, or look abroad upon the pastures, his heart swelled within him. The very grass seemed unlike what it used to be; the flowers flowered quite differently. Formerly, when he had walked over his plot of land, it was just like any other—but now it was a different thing altogether.

So Pakhom found life very pleasant. Everything went well with him, except that the muzhiks trespassed upon his crops and pastures. He besought them not to do so, but they took no heed. Sometimes the herdsmen let the cattle loose in the meadows; sometimes the horses galloped among the wheat. Pakhom drove them off, and remonstrated, but for a long time he did not go to law about it. At length his anger got the better of him, and to the local court 84