“Explain how Paches’ sow got into your hut.”
“Into my hut—Paches’ sow?—Mother, what did the honourable squire say?”
“Why, Bartek, he asked you about the pig that followed you to our hut.”
“Oh, I know … I know now. I pray the honourable court to excuse me and listen to what I have said already and repeat now.—It was a pig and not a sow; a white pig, with a black patch about the tail … or somewhat lower down.”
“Well, but how did it get into your hut?”
“Into my hut? I will tell you all exactly as it took place, and show the right worshipful court and the people here assembled that I am innocent, and that the woman Dominik is a lying gipsy, a cursed and pampered shrew.”
“A lying. … May the Most Holy Mother grant you be struck dead unshriven!” the woman ejaculated, with a deep sigh, and a glance at an image of the Blessed Virgin that hung in a corner. Then she clenched her bony fist, shook it at him, and hissed:
“O you swine-stealer! you villain, you!” and she opened her talons as though about to claw him.
Here Bartek’s wife interfered, screaming:
“Would you then? would you hurt him, you jade, you witch, you tyrant of your sons?”
“Be quiet,” ordered the judge.
“Hold your tongues when the judge is speaking, or I’ll turn you both out of the place!” Yacek chimed in, holding up his trousers; for the braces had given way.
Silence was now restored, and the two old women, who had all but flown at each other’s throats, now stood mute, though looking daggers and breathing hate.
“Speak now, Bartek, and tell us the whole truth.”
“Yes, the truth, the truth itself, as clear as crystal. As if I were at confession.—It was in this wise. …”
“Look well into your head,” his wife Magda put in, “lest you should forget anything.”
“I will do so, Magda.—It was in this wise. I was walking along (it was in spring, and I was close to Boryna’s clover-field, just beyond the Wolf-Hole). … So I walked along, saying my prayers, for night was coming on.—Now, on my way, I heard … was it a voice, or not? I wondered. Did it grunt, or not? … Behind me I looked, but saw nothing: all was still. Was it the devil after me? … I went on my way, shuddering with fear, and said a Hail Mary. … Again—a grunt! So I said to myself it was only a sow, or it might be a pig. … But I walked a few steps aside into the clover; and what did I see? Something following me. I stopped, it stopped. A long white thing, low on its legs; its eyes blazed like a wildcat’s or a devil’s. … I crossed myself; and having gooseflesh, mended my pace. For I knew not what thing it could be, prowling thus by night. Also, as all men know, the Wolf’s Hole is a haunted place.”
“Yes, that’s a truth,” his wife observed; “last year Sikora was passing there at night, and something took him by the throat, threw him down, and beat him so, that he kept his bed for a fortnight.”
“Hold your peace, Madga.—So on, on, on I went, with the thing still running after me—and grunting! Just then the moon shone out clear, and I saw.—Lo, it was a pig, and no devil at all! … I was angered; for what did the foolish thing mean by frightening me thus? So, throwing a stick at it, I make for my home, along the path between Michael’s beetroots and Boryna’s wheat, and then between Thomas’ sown corn and Yashek’s oats (him they took to the army last year, and whose wife had a baby yesterday). … And the pig still ran after me as a dog would run, and then going on one side, and into Dominik’s potato-patch, grunted all the way. I turned off, and followed a slanting pathway across the fields: and it followed still.—I felt hot all over. My God! a strange sow!—Perhaps it was no sow! I went round nigh the crucifix, and the pig after me. … I leapt the ditch: it leaped too! Then I went to the mounds beyond the crucifix. … After me still! Then I ran by the pear-trees, and it came between my legs, and tripped me up. … I wondered whether it was a possessed pig! I had scarce got up, when it began to run on before me, with its tail in the air. ‘Away with you, then, you pest of a beast!’ I said. But it did not go from me: straight to my hut, to my very hut, did it go! It passed the fence, most honourable court! by the fence into the passage, and into the room through the open door. So help me God! Amen!”
“And so you killed and ate it, did you?” the magistrate asked, with a smile.
“Killed? Ate?—Well, what was to be done? One day went by: the pig would not go. A week passed, and there was no getting rid of it: it always returned, squealing. My wife gave it all she could to eat. Were we to let it starve? it was as much God’s creature as we were. … But let the most honourable court, in its wisdom, take this into account: what was I, a poor orphan, to do with it? Nobody came for the beast, we were needy people; and it ate, and ate … as much at least as two other pigs would have done. What then? In a month, we should have been eaten out of house and home, aye, and out of our skins too. … What, then, could we do? It was a case of eat or be eaten.—So we did; but only a little of it; for they heard of it in the village, and the Dominik woman complained to the Soltys,8 and came with him, and took everything away.”
“Everything, indeed!” interrupted the Dominik woman, angrily. “And what became of the hind
