Matthew too, appalled at the sight of the bleak dreary waste, dissuaded him from purchasing it. “It was a bit of sterile moorland, fit only for the farm-yard dogs to celebrate their nuptials upon.”—But Simon held out stubbornly, and ended the matter by saying: “I have decided. Any soil is good, when there’s a good pair of hands to work at it!” He had taken it because of the low price—only sixty roubles per acre—and the Squire had promised besides to help him both with timber and otherwise. “And what I said then, I stand by now!” he cried, and gazed round with beaming eyes. Setting the barrow down on the pathway, he walked round the borders of his territory, marked off by branches stuck into the ground. Pacing on slowly, full of deep joy, he settled in his mind the order of his work: what to do, and with what to begin. It was for himself, for Nastka, for the whole future race of Paches, that he was about to work, and he felt as fiercely ravenous to begin as the wild wolf that has just seized a lamb and tasted its quivering flesh. He then proceeded to choose carefully the situation of his cabin. “Best build it over against the village, with the forest close on one side of it: so, ’twill be storm-protected, and the timber not so far to bring.” Having decided this, and marked the place of the four corners with stones, he threw off his sheepskin, crossed himself devoutly, spat on his hands and set himself to level the ground and fill the hollows left by the uprooted trees. And now the day had risen, golden: cattle bellowed, well-sweeps creaked, and the fresh breeze, running over the corn, brought with it as usual the clatter of carts and the hum of voices. To none of these things did Simon pay any heed, but plunged furiously into his work, only at intervals stopping to straighten his back for a moment and wipe the sweat from his forehead.... Then he repeated his onset, with the clinging and insatiable pertinacity of a leech: all the while, according to his custom, talking to each object as if it were animated. If he had to get a rock out of the earth: “You,” he would explain to it, “have lain and rested long: come, help to sustain my hut, ’tis high time.” Cutting down a blackthorn bush, he would remark, with a jeer: “No use resisting, foolish one: you cannot withstand me. What, should I leave you standing here to tear my galligaskins?” And to the wild old pear-trees he would say: “Ye grow too close together, and must be moved; but ye shall make a floor for my byre, as good as Boryna’s!” Sometimes, stopping to breathe, he would gloat over the land with eyes of love, and whisper to it: “My own—oh, my own!” For that soil, so weedy and barren, uncultivated and forsaken by all, he was full of pity, and would say caressingly, as though speaking to a child: “Patience, have patience yet awhile: I’ll till you, I’ll make you fat, and you’ll bear fruit like the other lands around you. Fear not: you shall be satisfied and rejoice.”