“Just hear him; he’s not artful, not he,” said a blackhaired peasant, with an unkempt beard, as he sat jolting from side to side on a well-fed mare, addressing an old man in a torn coat who rode by his side.  The two men were driving a herd of the peasants’ horses to graze in the night, alongside the highroad and secretly, in the landlord’s forest.

“Give you the land for nothing—­you need only sign—­have they not done the likes of us often enough?  No, my friend, none of your humbug.  Nowadays we have a little sense,” he added, and began shouting at a colt that had strayed.

He stopped his horse and looked round, but the colt had not remained behind; it had gone into the meadow by the roadside.  “Bother that son of a Turk; he’s taken to getting into the landowner’s meadows,” said the dark peasant with the unkempt beard, hearing the cracking of the sorrel stalks that the neighing colt was galloping over as he came running back from the scented meadow.

“Do you hear the cracking?  We’ll have to send the women folk to weed the meadow when there’s a holiday,” said the thin peasant with the torn coat, “or else we’ll blunt our scythes.”

“Sign,” he says.  The unkempt man continued giving his opinion of the landlord’s speech. “‘Sign,’ indeed, and let him swallow you up.”

“That’s certain,” answered the old man.  And then they were silent, and the tramping of the horses’ feet along the highroad was the only sound to be heard.

CHAPTER VIII.

GOD’S PEACE IN THE HEART.

When Nekhludoff returned he found that the office had been arranged as a bedroom for him.  A high bedstead, with a feather bed and two large pillows, had been placed in the room.  The bed was covered with a dark red doublebedded silk quilt, which was elaborately and finely quilted, and very stiff.  It evidently belonged to the trousseau of the foreman’s wife.  The foreman offered Nekhludoff the remains of the dinner, which the latter refused, and, excusing himself for the poorness of the fare and the accommodation, he left Nekhludoff alone.

The peasants’ refusal did not at all bother Nekhludoff.  On the contrary, though at Kousminski his offer had been accepted and he had even been thanked for it, and here he was met with suspicion and even enmity, he felt contented and joyful.

It was close and dirty in the office.  Nekhludoff went out into the yard, and was going into the garden, but he remembered:  that night, the window of the maid-servant’s room, the side porch, and he felt uncomfortable, and did not like to pass the spot desecrated by guilty memories.  He sat down on the doorstep, and breathing in the warm air, balmy with the strong scent of fresh birch leaves, he sat for a long time looking into the dark garden and listening to the mill, the nightingales, and some other bird that whistled monotonously in the bush close by.