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He found all spoke like Grandfather Yonov the One-Eyed; he learnt of the land in the olden time order, of the people's Rising. At its approach he went on furlough to Pochinki, met it there, and there remained. The Rising came like happy tidings, like the cool breath of dawn, like a May-time shower: Under a showery sky Bloom wide the fields of rye, Ever blue and chill May will the granaries fill.
The rye, oats, millet, and buckwheat were carried into the corn-kilns and barns, and the fields lay stripped and bare. The corn had been harvested; there was enough and to spare till the fallow crop was reaped. The air in the peasants' cottages was bedimmed by the smoke from the stoves; Grandfather Yonov the One-Eyed climbed on to his, to tell his grandchildren fairytales and to rest.
The sisters Yonov barked lime-trees and made bast shoes. It was a hard, stern life, with its smoke, heat, frosts, and languour; but they loved it profoundly. The Kononovs lived alone in friendship with the woods, the fields, and the sky; yet ever engaged in stubborn struggle against them. They had to remember the rise and set of the sun, the nights and the dung- mounds.
"We had 2,000 Cossacks with us, and got as far as the Hindu-Kush the Baragil Pass and another, unnamed, which we called, in honour of our colonel, the Yonov Pass. There we were confronted by Afghan troops, and defeated them at Somatash. By order of the English, who were paying him subsidies, Ameer Abdur-Rahman was obliged to resent this and petition their assistance.
They had learnt to know their Mother-Earth by the birds, sky, wind, and stars, like those men of whom Yonov the One-Eyed told them those who of old wended their way to Chuvsh tribes and the Murman Forest.
Formerly there were the village constable, the district clerk, trumperies, requisitions, and taxations; for then it was the gentry who were the guardians. But now, Yonov the One-Eyed croaked exultantly: "Now it's ourselves! We ourselves! In our own way! In our own world! The land is ours! We are the masters: it is the Rising! Our Rising!"
It was the people's Rising, and they had to live as in the olden days: there were no towns then, and there was no need for them. They turned back. To Poriechie for tar.... Silvester made them a hand-plough.... Grandfather Yonov the One Eyed stalked round the fields exhorting to sow: "We have to live by ourselves! Now we ourselves are the Masters! Ourselves alone! It is the Rising!"
From the oldest to the youngest they toiled with all their strength from spring to autumn, from autumn to spring, and from sunrise to sundown, growing grey like their hen-coops from smoke, scorching in the heat and steaming sweat like boiling tar. The kinsfolk of Yonov the One-eyed made tar besides tilling the land, while Yonov himself kept bee-hives in the forest.
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