“Do you know what, Levin, I’ll gallop home on that left trace-horse.  That will be splendid.  Eh?” he said, preparing to get out.

“No, why should you?” answered Levin, calculating that Vassenka could hardly weigh less than seventeen stone.  “I’ll send the coachman.”

The coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Levin himself drove the remaining pair.

Chapter 9

“Well, now what’s our plan of campaign?  Tell us all about it,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“Our plan is this.  Now we’re driving to Gvozdyov.  In Gvozdyov there’s a grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent snipe marshes where there are grouse too.  It’s hot now, and we’ll get there—­it’s fifteen miles or so—­towards evening and have some evening shooting; we’ll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger moors.”

“And is there nothing on the way?”

“Yes; but we’ll reserve ourselves; besides it’s hot.  There are two nice little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot.”

Levin would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only little places—­there would hardly be room for three to shoot.  And so, with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to shoot.  When they reached a little marsh Levin would have driven by, but Stepan Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once detected reeds visible from the road.

“Shan’t we try that?” he said, pointing to the little marsh.

“Levin, do, please! how delightful!” Vassenka Veslovsky began begging, and Levin could but consent.

Before they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other into the marsh.

“Krak!  Laska!...”

The dogs came back.

“There won’t be room for three.  I’ll stay here,” said Levin, hoping they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs, and turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the marsh.

“No!  Come along, Levin, let’s go together!” Veslovsky called.

“Really, there’s not room.  Laska, back, Laska!  You won’t want another dog, will you?”

Levin remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the sportsmen.  They walked right across the marsh.  Except little birds and peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.

“Come, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh,” said Levin, “only it’s wasting time.”

“Oh, no, it was jolly all the same.  Did you see us?” said Vassenka Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with his gun and his peewit in his hands.  “How splendidly I shot this bird!  Didn’t I?  Well, shall we soon be getting to the real place?”