affair so shrewdly that, in spite of all the cunning of the peasants’ representative, Iván Mirónov, in spite of the considerable presents distributed by him to the members of the higher court, the case was retried in the Government Court in favour of the proprietor, and the land was to go back to him from the peasants, of which fact their representative was duly informed.
The representative, Iván Mirónov, told the peasants at the meeting of the Commune that the gentleman in the Government capital had pulled the proprietor’s leg and had “mixed up” the whole business, so that they wanted to take the land back again, but that the proprietor would not be successful, because he had a petition all written up to be sent to the Senate, and that then the land would be forever confirmed to the peasants; all they had to do was to collect a rouble from each soul. The peasants decided to collect the money and again to entrust the whole matter to Iván Mirónov. When Mirónov had all the money in his hands, he went to St. Petersburg.
When, in the year 1817, during Passion-week—it fell late that year—the time came to plough the ground, the Izlegóshcha peasants began to discuss at a meeting whether they ought to plough the land under litigation during that year, or not; and, although Apýkhtin’s clerk had come to see them during Lent with the order that they should not plough the land and should come to some agreement with him in regard to the rye already planted in what had been the doubtful, and now was Apýkhtin’s land, the peasants, for the very reason that the winter crop had been sowed on the debatable land, and because Apýkhtin, in his desire to avoid being unfair to them, wished to arbitrate the matter with them, decided to plough the land under litigation and to take possession of it before touching any other fields.
On the very day when the peasants went out to plough, which was Maundy Thursday, Iván Petróvich Apýkhtin, who had been preparing