Boryna, up in an instant, rushed to the haystack; but Yagna too was no longer there, having slipped out and disappeared in the night. And then, in the voice of one raving mad with rage, he roared out: “Fire! Fire!” and ran round the hayrick, wielding his pitchfork, and looking for all the world like a fiend in the bloodred glow. … —The fire had by now got complete hold of the stack—hissing, humming, roaring, and raising on high its pillar of flame and of smoke.
Folk came along in haste; the cry of “Fire!” had quickly spread through the village. Someone had rung the alarm-bell, and every heart was throbbing with fear. But the flame of the conflagration rose ever higher and higher, waving its fiery mantle from side to side, and raining a torrent of red sparks over all the buildings, both near it and throughout the whole village.
XII
The morrow which followed that memorable night was full of great excitement; and all Lipka swarmed like an anthill when a naughty boy has thrust a stick into it.
Dawn had scarcely risen, people had but just begun to rub their eyes and wake up, when they all of one accord made their way to the scene of the fire. Some even said their prayers as they went, to save time, and hurried along as to a fair.
The day rose, blurred as with mist; for the snow, coming down in great soft flakes, threw its wet ragged cloak over everything. That, however, no one minded; all gathered in groups, and stood for hours together on the spot, talking in low tones about the events of the night, and pricking up their ears to get at any new detail that might offer.
The rick was in ruins—so completely burned down that nothing had been left standing save the two supports it had been built upon. And these too were like half-burnt-out brands. The thatch had also been torn from the sties and the shed, down to the very girders. The pathway and neighbouring land were, for half the length of a field, covered with burnt thatch, splinters of laths, ashes of straw, bits of charred wood.
The snow continued to fall, and after a time overspread everything with a glistening sheet, which the glowing embers had thawed in places. Here and there, too, there issued streams of smoke or even pale hissing flames from heaps of hay that had been pulled from the rick, which the men set to work upon with hedge-bills, stamping out the flames with their clogs, beating the hay with sticks, and heaping it over with snow.
They were just at work on one of those smouldering heaps, when a lad fished out a charred rag and held it aloft.
“ ’Tis Yagna’s apron!” Kozlova sneered; for they all knew what had taken place, or guessed it shrewdly.
“Search well, lads; ye may also find a pair of hose.”
“Oh, no! he carried them off unscathed … unless he lost them by the way!”
“The lasses have been after them all the time, but someone was too quick and got them first.”
“Silence, babblers!” the Soltys shouted indignantly. “Come ye to make merry here, and grin over your neighbour’s misfortune?—Off, women! get you home; what do ye, standing here?”
“Meddle not with our business, but do your own; for that only are ye in office!” Kozlova retorted in such shrill tones of anger that the Soltys looked her in the face, spat with disgust, and withdrew to the farmyard. No one moved an inch; and the women set to pushing the singed apron about with their clogs, and confer together in fierce tones.
“Such a one,” Kozlova said aloud, “should be treated as witches were dealt with of old—driven out from amongst us with a lighted candle and an oven-poker!”
“Surely! Has not all this befallen through her fault?” chimed in Sikora’s wife.
“It is,” put in Sohova gently, “a mercy of the Lord that the whole village has not been burnt down!”
“True: a miracle, a miracle indeed.”
“Yes; there was no wind, and they gave the alarm at once.”
“Besides, the alarm-bell was rung, and we were only in our first sleep.”
“It is likely the bear-leaders, who were coming from the tavern, were the first to see it.”
“Ah, no, my dear! Boryna caught them inside the haystack, and had only just separated them, when the fire broke out. Last night, when I saw them at the Klembas’, going out together, I was sure something of the sort would happen.”
“The old man had long been on the watch to catch them.”
“My son tells me he had been walking about outside Klemba’s ever so long, waiting for them,” Kobusova remarked.
“Antek must have set the rick on fire out of spite.”
“Did he not threaten he would do so?”
“It could not but have ended in some such way; it could not,” Kozlova put in.
Meanwhile, another group of housewives were also whispering, but lower and to more purpose.
“Do you know? Boryna has swinged Yagna so, that she is now lying sick in her mother’s house!”
“Certainly; he turned her out at dawn, and sent her chest with all her things after her,” Balcerek’s wife, who had hitherto said nothing, told them now.
Ploshka’s wife contradicted her:
“Pray do not talk at random; I was in the hut just now, and her chest is standing there.
“But,” she added in a higher key, “on her wedding-day I foretold it would come to this.”
“O my God!” Sohova groaned, raising her open hands, “what an awful, awful thing!”
“Ah, well, he will be locked up for it, and that’s all!”
“It is but just: we might all have been burnt out.”
“I,” said Ploshka’s wife, “was beginning to enjoy my first sleep, when Luke, who had been running about with the bear-leaders, came tapping at
