He was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with the
leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeled
aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed through the open
door in which the dry bitter dust of the thrashing whirled and
played, at the grass of the thrashing floor in the sunlight and
the fresh straw that had been brought in from the barn, then at
the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in
under the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the
crevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the
dark, dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.

"Why is it all being done?" he thought. "Why am I standing here,
making them work? What are they all so busy for, trying to show
their zeal before me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend,
toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam fell on her in the
fire)" he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking up
the grain, moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet
over the uneven, rough floor. "Then she recovered, but today or
tomorrow or in ten years she won't; they'll bury her, and
nothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl in the
red jacket, who with that skillful, soft action shakes the ears
out of their husks. They'll bury her and this piebald horse, and
very soon too," he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, panting
horse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. "And
they will bury her and Fyodor the thrasher with his curly beard
full of chaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders--they
will bury him. He's untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and
shouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the strap on
the moving wheel. And what's more, it's not them alone--me
they'll bury too, and nothing will be left. What for?"