Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/51

 MASTER AND MAN

happened in the seventies, on the day after wintry Nicholas' Day. There had been a feast in the parish, and town councillor Vasily Andreich Brekhunov (he was also a merchant of the second guild) could not absent himself therefrom — he was a church elder — and had moreover to receive and entertain at home his kinsfolk and acquaintances. And now the last of the guests had gone, and Vasily Andreich began setting about departing immediately to a neighbouring squire, to buy of him a wood for which he had long been in treaty. Vasily Andreich made haste to depart, lest the merchants of the town should anticipate him by over-bidding him, and thus snatch away from him this profitable property. The young squire asked ten thousand for this wood, simply because Vasily Andreich had offered seven thousand for it. Seven thousand indeed was only a third of the actual value of the wood. Vasily Andreich might have been inclined to beat him down still further, because the