roads to people who passed; at the wine-shop to people who were drinking; and after church on the following Sunday. He even stopped strangers to tell them about it. His mind was at rest now, and yet something embarrassed him, although he could not say just what it was. People seemed to laugh while they listened to him. They did not seem convinced. He felt as if remarks were made behind his back.

On Tuesday of the next week, he went to market at Goderville, impelled solely by the longing to tell his story.

Malandain, standing in his doorway, began to laugh when he saw him coming. Why?

He accosted a farmer from Criquetot, who did not let him finish, but poked him in the pit of his stomach, and shouted in his face:

"Go on, you old fox!" Then he turned on his heel.

Master Hauchecorne was speechless, and more and more disturbed. Why did he call him "old fox"?

When he was seated at the table, in Jourdain's inn, he set about explaining the affair once more.

A horse-trader from Montvilliers called out to him:

"Nonsense, nonsense, you old dodger! I know all about your string!"

"But they've found the wallet!" faltered Hauchecorne.

"None of that, old boy; there's one who finds it, and there's one who carries it back. I don't know just how you did it, but I understand you."

The peasant was fairly stunned. He understood at last. He was accused of having sent the wallet back by a confederate, an accomplice.

He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.

He could not finish his dinner, but left the inn amid a chorus

of jeers.

He returned home, shamefaced and indignant, suffocated by wrath, by confusion, and all the more cast down because, with his Norman cunning, he was quite capable of doing the thing

with which he was charged, and even of boasting of it as a shrewd trick. He had a confused idea that his innocence was impossible to establish, his craftiness being so well known. And he was

cut to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion. may I

Thereupon he began once more to tell of the adventure, making the story longer each day, adding each time new arguments, more forcible protestations, more solemn oaths, which he devised and prepared in his hours of solitude, his mind being wholly engrossed by the story of the string. The more complicated his defence and the more subtle his reasoning, the less he was believed.

"Those are liar's reasons," people said behind his back.

He realized it; he gnawed his nails, and exhausted himself in vain efforts.

He grew perceptibly thinner.

Now the jokers asked him to tell the story of The Piece of String for their amusement, as a soldier who has seen service is asked to tell about his battles. His mind, attacked at its source, grew feebler.

Late in December he took to his bed.

In the first days of January he died, and in the delirium of the death-agony, he protested his innocence, repeating:

"A little piece of string a little piece of string - see, here it is, m'sieu' mayor."

THREE ARSHINS OF LAND1

LYOF N. TOLSTOI

PAKHOM'S neighbor was a lady who owned a little estate. She had one hundred and twenty dessyatins. For a long time she had never harmed the peasants in any way, living in peace with them. But lately she had installed a retired soldier as superintendent, and he worried the peasants with fines. No matter how careful Pakhom was, a horse would invade his neighbor's oatfield, or his cow would stray into her garden or the calves into the pasture. There was a fine for everything.

Pakhom paid, growled, beat his family, and in the course of the summer laid up much sin upon his soul because of the superintendent. He found relief only by keeping his cattle in the yard. He begrudged the fodder, but he was thus spared much anxiety.

In the winter the rumor spread that his neighbor meant to dispose of her land and that the superintendent thought of buying it. When the peasants heard this they were greatly troubled.

If the superintendent becomes the master, they judged, there will be no end to the fines.

They importuned the lady to sell the land to the community and not to the superintendent. As they promised to pay her more than the latter, she agreed. The peasants held a meeting, then met again, but came to no understanding. The Devil sowed dissensions. Finally they decided that each should buy land according to his means, and the owner consented again. When Pakhom heard that a neighboring peasant had bought

1 Copyright. Reprinted by permission of Current Opinion. Translated by Archibald J. Wolfe.

2 Properly, 2.7 acres.

twenty dessyatins of the land, with time extension to pay onehalf of the purchase price, he became envious. "They'll sell the whole land, and I'll go empty-handed." He consulted with his wife. "The peasants are buying land. We must get ten dessyatins," he said. They considered how to arrange the

matter.

They had saved a hundred rubles. They sold a foal, onehalf of their beehives, hired the son out as a laborer, and thus succeeded in scraping one-half of the money together.

Pakhom looked over a tract of land of fifteen dessyatins, with a grove, and negotiated with his neighbor. He contracted for the fifteen dessyatins and paid his earnest money. Then they drove to the city and made out the deed. He paid one-half of the money and agreed to pay the rest in two years. now had land.

Pakhom

He borrowed money from his brother-in-law, bought seed and sowed the purchased land. Everything came up beautifully. Inside of a year he was able to pay off his debts to the neighbor and to his brother-in-law. Pakhom was now a landowner in his own right. He cultivated his own ground, and cut his own pasturage. He was overjoyed. The grass had another look; different kinds of flowers seemed to bloom on it. Once upon a time this land had looked to him the same as any other, but now it was a specially blessed piece of God's earth.

Pakhom was enjoying life. Everything would be well now if the peasants only left his fields alone, if they did not let their cattle graze on his meadows. He admonished them in a friendly fashion. But they did not desist from driving their cows on his land, and at night the strangers' horses invaded his grain. Pakhom chased them and for a time did not lay it up against the peasants. Finally, however, he lost patience and made a complaint to the court. He knew very well, tho, that necessity forced the peasants to do this, not love of wrongdoing. Still, he thought, he would have to teach them a lesson, or they would graze his land bare. A good lesson might be useful.

With the help of the court he taught them more than one lesson; more than one peasant was fined. And so it happened that the peasants were in no amiable mood towards him and were eager to play tricks on him. He was soon at loggerheads with all his neighbors. His land had grown, but the confines of the community seemed all too narrow now.

One day, as he was seated at home, a traveling peasant asked for a lodging. Pakhom kept him over night, gave him plenty of meat and drink, inquired where he came from and talked of this and that. The peasant related that he was on the way from the lower Volga region, where he had been working. Many peasants had settled there. They were received into the community and ten dessyatins were allotted to each. Beautiful land! It made the heart feel glad to see it full of sheaves. A peasant had come there naked and poor, with empty hands, and now he had fifty dessyatins under wheat. Last year he sold his one crop of wheat for five thousand rubles.

Pakhom listened with delight. He thought: why plague oneself in this crowded section, if one can live fine elsewhere? I will sell my land and property and from the proceeds I will buy land on the lower Volga and start a farm. Here in this crowded corner there is nothing but quarreling. I will go and look things over for myself.

When summer came he started on his journey. He went by boat to Samara on the Volga, then four thousand versts on foot. When he arrived at his journey's end he found things even as they had been reported to him. Ten dessyatins were allotted to each person, and the mujiks were glad to receive the stranger into the community. If a man brought money with him he was welcome and could buy as much land as he pleased. Three rubles a dessyatin was the price for the best land.

When Pakhom had investigated everything, he returned home, sold his land at a profit, sold his homestead and cattle, took leave from his community, and, when the spring came around, he journeyed with his family to the new lands.