The first chapter serves as an exposure, which reveals the hero's background. The former mercenary Ivan Didukh, who had served 10 years in the imperial army, returned home and found only a dilapidated house and the worst part of the field on a barren sandhill, inherited from his dead parents. And even though Ivan brought the money from the army, with which he bought a good land and became owner, he still undertook to cultivate the mound, setting himself an ambitious goal: forcing this mound to produce bread.