steps of Stepan Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could not explain to himself.
Picking his steps, he moved up to the dog.
“Fetch it!”
Not a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Levin had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of Veslovsky’s voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Levin saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.
When he had made sure he had missed, Levin looked round and saw the horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.
Veslovsky, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and got the horses stuck in the mud.
“Damn the fellow!” Levin said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire. “What did you drive in for?” he said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the horses out.
Levin was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither Stepan Arkadyevitch nor Veslovsky helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the slightest notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply to Vassenka’s protestations that it had been quite dry there, Levin worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Veslovsky was tugging at the