Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/139

Rh Pakhom went to and fro, he saw all around him merchant muzhiks living on their own farms, and doing very well "That's something like a trade," thought Pakhom. "If only I could buy a small estate out-and-out and build a farm upon it, I should be as right as a trivet."

And so Pakhom began to rack his brains as to how he could buy an estate out-and-out.

Thus Pakhom lived for five years. He hired more land and sowed more and more wheat. The years rolled by prosperously; the wheat crops were good; he began to amass money. Life would indeed have been worth living but for the annoyance which Pakhom felt in hiring land from people every year, and losing time by going in search of it. Wherever the land was a little better than usual, thither would the muzhiks flock and divide it amongst them, and if he did not make haste to buy, there would be no more left to sow upon. And once he hired from the merchants one half of the communal pasturages, and ploughed it up. The muzhiks brought an action against him, and the whole arrangement fell through. If it had only been his own land none would have interfered, and there would have been no opposition.

Now, while Pakhom was thinking where he could buy land out-and-out, he fell in with a muzhik who had 500 acres of land, but had ruined himself and was selling it dirt cheap. Pakhom began to bargain with him. They haggled and haggled about the price, but at last it was fixed at 1,000 roubles (£100), half of which was to be paid down. They were just about to finally settle, when a merchant on his way home 89