“That’s no go.  We prefer to go on the old way,” began several dissatisfied, and even rude, voices.

The refusals grew very vehement when Nekhludoff mentioned that he would draw up an agreement which would have to be signed by him and by them.

“Why sign?  We shall go on working as we have done hitherto.  What is all this for?  We are ignorant men.”

“We can’t agree, because this sort of thing is not what we have been used to.  As it was, so let it continue to be.  Only the seeds we should like to withdraw.”

This meant that under the present arrangement the seeds had to be provided by the peasants, and they wanted the landlord to provide them.

“Then am I to understand that you refuse to accept the land?” Nekhludoff asked, addressing a middle-aged, barefooted peasant, with a tattered coat, and a bright look on his face, who was holding his worn cap with his left hand, in a peculiarly straight position, in the same way soldiers hold theirs when commanded to take them off.

“Just so,” said this peasant, who had evidently not yet rid himself of the military hypnotism he had been subjected to while serving his time.

“It means that you have sufficient land,” said Nekhludoff.

“No, sir, we have not,” said the ex-soldier, with an artificially pleased look, carefully holding his tattered cap in front of him, as if offering it to any one who liked to make use of it.

“Well, anyhow, you’d better think over what I have said.”  Nekhludoff spoke with surprise, and again repeated his offer.

“We have no need to think about it; as we have said, so it will be,” angrily muttered the morose, toothless old man.

“I shall remain here another day, and if you change your minds, send to let me know.”

The peasants gave no answer.

So Nekhludoff did not succeed in arriving at any result from this interview.

“If I might make a remark, Prince,” said the foreman, when they got home, “you will never come to any agreement with them; they are so obstinate.  At a meeting these people just stick in one place, and there is no moving them.  It is because they are frightened of everything.  Why, these very peasants—­say that white-haired one, or the dark one, who were refusing, are intelligent peasants.  When one of them comes to the office and one makes him sit down to cup of tea it’s like in the Palace of Wisdom—­he is quite diplomatist,” said the foreman, smiling; “he will consider everything rightly.  At a meeting it’s a different man—­he keeps repeating one and the same . . .”

“Well, could not some of the more intelligent men he asked to come here?” said Nekhludoff.  “I would carefully explain it to them.”

“That can be done,” said the smiling foreman.

“Well, then, would you mind calling them here to-morrow?”

“Oh, certainly I will,” said the foreman, and smiled still more joyfully.  “I shall call them to-morrow.”