This is what had happened.  From the foreman’s words, it seemed that the peasants were in the habit of letting their calves and even their cows into the meadow belonging to the estate.  Two cows belonging to the families of these two women were found in the meadow, and driven into the yard.  The foreman demanded from the women 30 copecks for each cow or two days’ work.  The women, however, maintained that the cows had got into the meadow of their own accord; that they had no money, and asked that the cows, which had stood in the blazing sun since morning without food, piteously lowing, should be returned to them, even if it had to be on the understanding that the price should be worked off later on.

“How often have I not begged of you,” said the smiling foreman, looking back at Nekhludoff as if calling upon him to be a witness, “if you drive your cattle home at noon, that you should have an eye on them?”

“I only ran to my little one for a bit, and they got away.”

“Don’t run away when you have undertaken to watch the cows.”

“And who’s to feed the little one?  You’d not give him the breast, I suppose?” said the other woman.  “Now, if they had really damaged the meadow, one would not take it so much to heart; but they only strayed in a moment.”

“All the meadows are damaged,” the foreman said, turning to Nekhludoff.  “If I exact no penalty there will be no hay.”

“There, now, don’t go sinning like that; my cows have never been caught there before,” shouted the pregnant woman.

“Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off.”

“All right, I’ll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don’t torture her with hunger,” she cried, angrily.  “As it is, I have no rest day or night.  Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to drink; I’m all alone to do all the work, and my strength’s at an end.  I wish you’d choke, you and your working it off.”

Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was nothing more to think about.

Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident.  The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process:  there was the great mortality among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the aged.  And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did not complain.  Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it should be.  Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people’s great want was one that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.