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"All the meadows are damaged," the foreman said, turning to Nekhludoff. "If I exact no penalty there will be no hay." "There, now, don't go sinning like that; my cows have never been caught there before," shouted the pregnant woman. "Now that one has been caught, pay up or work it off." "All right, I'll work it off; only let me have the cow now, don't torture her with hunger," she cried, angrily. "As it is, I have no rest day or night. Mother-in-law is ill, husband taken to drink; I'm all alone to do all the work, and my strength's at an end. I wish you'd choke, you and your working it off." Nekhludoff asked the foreman to let the women take the cows, and went back into the garden to go on thinking out his problem, but there was nothing more to think about. Everything seemed so clear to him now that he could not stop wondering how it was that everybody did not see it, and that he himself had for such a long while not seen what was so clearly evident. The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the aged. And so gradually had the people come to this condition that they did not realise the full horrors of it, and did not complain. Therefore, we consider their condition natural and as it should be. Now it seemed as clear as daylight that the chief cause of the people's great want was one that they themselves knew and always pointed out, i.e., that the land which alone could feed them had been taken from them by the landlords.