Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.

“Fetch it!”

Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog.  Levin had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of Veslovsky’s voice, shouting something with strange loudness.  Levin saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.

When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.

Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and got the horses stuck in the mud.

“Damn the fellow!” Levin said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire.  “What did you drive in for?” he said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the horses out.

Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the slightest notion of harnessing.  Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply to Vassenka’s protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses.  But then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was tugging at the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it indeed, Levin blamed himself for having under the influence of yesterday’s feelings been too cold to Veslovsky, and tried to be particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness.  When everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back to the road, Levin had the lunch served.

“Bon appetit—­bonne conscience!  Ce poulet va tomber jusqu’au fond de mes bottes,” Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the French saying as he finished his second chicken.  “Well, now our troubles are over, now everything’s going to go well.  Only, to atone for my sins, I’m bound to sit on the box.  That’s so? eh?  No, no!  I’ll be your Automedon.  You shall see how I’ll get you along,” he answered, not letting go the rein, when Levin begged him to let the coachman drive.  “No, I must atone for my sins, and I’m very comfortable on the box.”  And he drove.

Levin was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh.

Chapter 10

Vassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot.