"Krak! Laska!..."

The dogs came back.

"There won't be room for three. I'll stay here," said Levin,
hoping they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled
by the dogs, and turning over in their flight, were plaintively
wailing over the marsh.

"No! Come along, Levin, let's go together!" Veslovsky called.

"Really, there's not room. Laska, back, Laska! You won't want
another dog, will you?"

Levin remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the
sportsmen. They walked right across the marsh. Except little
birds and peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was
nothing in the marsh.

"Come, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh,"
said Levin, "only it's wasting time."

"Oh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?" said
Vassenka Veslovsky, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with
his gun and his peewit in his hands. "How splendidly I shot
this bird! Didn't I? Well, shall we soon be getting to the real
place?"

The horses started off suddenly, Levin knocked his head against
the stock of someone's gun, and there was the report of a shot.
The gun did actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to
Levin. It appeared that Vassenka Veslovsky had pulled only one
trigger, and had left the other hammer still cocked. The charge
flew into the ground without doing harm to anyone. Stepan
Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed reprovingly at Veslovsky.
But Levin had not the heart to reprove him. In the first place,
any reproach would have seemed to be called forth by the danger
he had incurred and the bump that had come up on Levin's
forehead. And besides, Veslovsky was at first so naïvely
distressed, and then laughed so good-humoredly and infectiously
at their general dismay, that one could not but laugh with him.