gdom
of delight, where no good thing was wanting. Their business was farming
land that belonged to a Polish nobleman, a business that knows of good
times and of bad, of fat years and lean years, years of high prices and
years of low. But on the whole it was a good business and profitable,
and it afforded them a comfortable living. Besides, they were used to
the country, they could not fancy themselves anywhere else. The very
thing that had never entered their head is just what happened. In the
beginning of the "eighties" they were obliged to leave the estate they
had farmed for ten years, because the lease was up, and the recently
promulgated "temporary laws" forbade them to renew it. This was bad for
them from a material point of view, because it left them without regular
income just when their children were growing up and expenses had
increased, but their mental distress was so great, that, for the time,
the financial side of the misfortune was thrown into the shade.

When we made her acquaintance, many years had passed since then, many
another trouble had come into her life, but one could hear tears in her
voice while she told the story of that first misfortune. It was a
bitter Tisho-b'ov for them when they left the house, the gardens, the
barns, and the stalls, their whole life, all those things concerning
which they had forgotten, and their children had hardly known, that they
were not their own possession.

Their town surroundings made them more conscious of their altered
circumstances. She herself, the elder children oftener still, had been
used to drive into the town now and again, but that was on pleasure
trips, which had lasted a day or two at most; they had never tried
staying there longer, and it was no wonder if they felt cramped and
oppressed in town after their free life in the open.

When they first settled there, they had a capital of about ten thousand
rubles, but by reason of inexperience in their new occupation they were
worsted in competition with others, and a few turns of bad luck brought
them almost to ruin. The capital grew less from year to year; everything
they took up was more of a struggle than the last venture; poverty came
nearer and nearer, and the father of the family began to show signs of
illness, brought on by town life and worry. This, of course, made their
material position worse, and the knowledge of it reacted disastrously on
his health. Three years after he came to town, he die