There was of oats enough to pay all the taxes and provide for all wants. Ivan and his children had only to live happily together and be content. But they had a neighbour—a next-door neighbour, Gabriel Khromoi,[1] the son of Gordy Ivanov, and enmity arose between him and Ivan.
So long as old Gordy was alive, and Ivan's father managed affairs, the muzhiks lived friendly together. If the women wanted a sieve or a tub, if the, men wanted to borrow a sack or a wheel from time to time, they used to send these things from one house to the other; they were neighbours, always ready with a helping hand. If the calf ran into the threshing-floor they drove him off, and simply said: "Don't come to us, pray; the corn-heaps are not yet stacked." But as for locking up the barns or out-houses, or hiding anything away therein, or tale-bearing one against the other, all such things never once entered into their heads.
Thus they lived in the days of the old people. But the young people now began to keep house, and—things were otherwise.
The veriest trifle was the cause of it all. Ivan's daughter-in-law had a hen which was a good layer. The young women was collecting the eggs for Easter. Every day she went for the new-laid egg to the shed of the cart-house.
One day, however, scared perhaps by the cries of the children, the hen flew across the hurdle fence into the neighbour's grounds, and there settled down to
- ↑ The lame.
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