the monotony; a grey stone stood out for an instant or a parched
willow with a blue crow on its top branch; a marmot would run across
the road and--again there flitted before the eyes only the high
grass, the low hills, the rooks. . . .

But at last, thank God, a waggon loaded with sheaves came to meet
them; a peasant wench was lying on the very top. Sleepy, exhausted
by the heat, she lifted her head and looked at the travellers.
Deniska gaped, looking at her; the horses stretched out their noses
towards the sheaves; the chaise, squeaking, kissed the waggon, and
the pointed ears passed over Father Christopher's hat like a brush.

"You are driving over folks, fatty!" cried Deniska. "What a swollen
lump of a face, as though a bumble-bee had stung it!"

The girl smiled drowsily, and moving her lips lay down again; then
a solitary poplar came into sight on the low hill. Someone had
planted it, and God only knows why it was there. It was hard to
tear the eyes away from its graceful figure and green drapery. Was
that lovely creature happy? Sultry heat in summer, in winter frost
and snowstorms, terrible nights in autumn when nothing is to be
seen but darkness and nothing is to be heard but the senseless angry
howling wind, and, worst of all, alone, alone for the whole of life
. . . . Beyond the poplar stretches of wheat extended like a bright
yellow carpet from the road to the top of the hills. On the hills
the corn was already cut and laid up in sheaves, while at the bottom
they were still cutting. . . . Six mowers were standing in a row
swinging their scythes, and the scythes gleamed gaily and uttered
in unison together "Vzhee, vzhee!" From the movements of the peasant
women binding the sheaves, from the faces of the mowers, from the