In a dividing trough in that forest an earth surveyor was sleeping; he was not yet old but weary, perhaps from earth management. His mouth had opened itself in sleepy lassitude, and a live, disturbing smell of resinous pines entered the depth of the surveyor's body and made him healthier there, so that the body was again capable of managing the wheat ploughmen's earth. The man rested and was being filled with the happiness of shared repose; his tools, the theodolite and the measuring tape, lay on the ground and were being hurriedly examined by ants and a dry spider that always lived individually due to its stinginess. Pyotr Yevseyevich tore some grass out of its accumulation in the trough, shaped that grass into a soft pulp of sorts and put it underneath the sleeping head of the earth surveyor, bothering him gently to attain comfort. The surveyor did not awake; he only moaned something like a plaintive orphan and sunk again into sleep. However, it was already better for him to rest on a soft grass. He would sleep tighter and survey the earth more accurately — with this feeling of useful participation Pyotr Yevseyevich went on to his next activities.

The forest ceased quickly, and the earth under the trees became trenchy furrows and yet undivided lots of rye ploughland. Ordinary villages lived behind the rye, and above them was air from the frightening space, — Pyotr Yevseyevich considered air a good thing also, since from it breathing was delivered to the entire area of the State. Windless days bothered him however; the peasants have nothing to grind with, and the infected air stays over the city, whereby the sanitary condition is worsened. But Pyotr Yevseyevich bore his anxiety not as a suffering but as a concerned necessity which occupies the entire soul by its meaning and thereby makes the burden of one's own life imperceptible. At the moment, Pyotr Yevseyevich was a little worried for a locomotive that was hauling up some rough freights with sharp, stifled wisps of steam which reached at Pyotr Yevseyevich's tense feelings. Pyotr Yevseyevich stopped and with a helpful compassion imagined the ordeal of a machine pushing the stagnation of sedimentary weight forward and uphill.