Someone here inquired: “Did you see that? In the village they talk otherwise.”
“Did I see?—Why, I was in there with her, and she herself complained how he teased her!”
“You lying cur!” Antek shrieked, as he darted past the threshold.
Matthew instantly sprang at him. But, swift as thought, Antek was upon him with the leap of a wolf. One hand clutching at his throat, stopping both breath and voice, the other grasping his belt, he whirled him up in the air like a bush you root out, burst open the door with a kick, and rushed with him beyond the sawmill to the river-fence, against which he hurled him with such fury that four rails broke like reeds, and Matthew fell into the stream like a log!
A great tumult and clamour ensued, for in that spot the river was deep and swift. They hastened to the rescue and got him out at once, but he was insensible. The miller came running in directly and sent for Ambrose, who came in at once. The people from the village assembled in crowds, till Matthew was conveyed into the miller’s house; he swooned again and again, and spat much blood. And as they feared he could not live through the night, the priest was sent for.
Antek, as soon as Matthew had been carried out, coolly took his place by the fireside, chatting with Franek, who had turned up; and when the folk were back in the room again, and things a little more quiet, Antek spoke out, so loud that all could hear him:
“If anyone shall a second time bait and mock me, I will do the like to him, yea, and more also!”
No one answered a word. They only gazed upon him in profound wonder and respect. How had it been possible to lay hold on such a man as Matthew, lift him up as easily as a bundle of straw, carry him out and hurl him into the river? So stupendous a feat had never yet been heard of. They might have fought together, wrestled, and one in the end have overcome the other, with breaking of bones even, or the crushing out of life: that was quite a usual thing. But no: he had taken the man, just as you take a puppy by the ears, and thrown him into the river! That the rails had broken his ribs, that was nothing; he might get well. But the shame of it, the shame, was what Matthew would never be able to bear: he was disgraced for all his life.
“Really, really, my dear fellow,” one man repeated to another, “never yet has such a thing been!”
Heedless of their talk, Antek got his meal ground and went home about midnight. He saw the lighted window of the room at the miller’s where they had taken Matthew.
“Foul dog!” he said as he glanced that way, and spat on the ground in hatred, “ye never will boast again of having been with Yagna in her bedchamber!”
Hanka had not yet gone to bed, and was spinning when he came in; but he told her nothing. In the morning he stopped away from work, feeling sure they had turned him away. But he had scarcely breakfasted when the miller came in.
“Come and work. Your quarrel with Matthew is your own business: I have naught to do with it. But the sawmill must go on working as before, till he is well.—You will now be overseer, and have four zloty a day and dinner.”
“I do not accept. Give me what you gave Matthew, then I will: and do his work as well as he.”
The miller flew in a rage, and wanted to bargain, but he was obliged to give in: what else could he do? He took him on at once, and walked away.
Hanka, who had been told nothing of what had occurred, was much puzzled at all this.
IV
Since daybreak on Christmas Eve, the whole village was in a state of feverish excitement and bustling activity.
It had again frozen during the night, and as the frost came after a couple of mild days and damp fogs, the trees were all covered over with a moss-like growth of glassy crystals. The sun had come out of the clouds, and shone in a clear blue sky, with only the thinnest and most transparent veil of haze; but it shone palely, coldly, like the Host in the Monstrance, warming nothing. The frost had grown harder as the day advanced, and of such severity and penetration that it almost took the breath away, and raised a cloud of condensed vapour round every living being. Yet the world was steeped in bright sunshine, and radiant with glittering splendour; on every side the sparkling snow seemed oversprinkled with a dew of diamond-like scintillation. The surrounding fields, buried under their white pall, lay refulgent, but dead. Now and then a bird passed, flapping over their pure expanse, while its black shadow glided along the ground below; or a covey of partridges clucked amongst the snow-laden bushes, with timorous watchfulness and stealth, drawing near to the dwellings of men and their cornstacks crammed with grain. Elsewhere a hare would show its dark form, leaping through the drifts, or standing on its hind legs, or gnawing to get at the garnered corn, but—alarmed by the barking of the dogs—scamper back to the great forest, where every tree was tufted with hoarfrost.
A keen piercing cold, luminous with glacial sheen, now shimmered over the whole world, and plunged it in icebound stillness.
Not a single cry broke the hard silence of the countryside, no living voice resounded, no breath of wind whispered
