“The knaves thrust it in there, ’tis clear; but how could Lapa let them do it? So fierce a dog!”
“And how was it no bark was heard last night?”
They sent to inform the Soltys, and the news flew over all the village. People thronged into the orchard, the pit was as much besieged as a church confessional: everyone peeped in, looked Burek over, and gave his opinion.
Roch also came. He calmed Yuzka, who, voluble, excited, and tearful, was telling them what had occurred; then, going in to Hanka, who had lain down again, he said:
“I feared lest ye might take this too much to heart.”
“Wherefore? Glory be to God, he has stolen nothing.” She added, in a low voice: “For he came too late.”
“Have ye any guess who it is?”
“The blacksmith! I’d lay my life on’t!”
“Then—was he searching for aught in particular?”
“He was: but failed.—I name him only to you.”
“Certainly.—Unless he had been taken in the very act, or ye had witnesses—Well, well! Money makes a man dare awful things!”
“Good friend,” she entreated, “not even Antek is to know of this!”
“I am not one to talk at random, as you are aware. Moreover, ’tis easier to slay than to beget.—I knew the fellow for a knave, yet would never have suspected him of that.”
“Oh, he sticks at naught: well do I know him.”
The Voyt, arriving with the Soltys, then set to make a thorough search, questioning Yuzka carefully.
“Were Koziol not in jail,” he muttered, “I should think it to be his deed.”
“Hush, Peter,” the Soltys interrupted, nudging him; “there is his wife, just coming up.”
“They must have been frightened away; nothing has been taken.”
“We must notify the gendarmes, of course. … More work! Satan will not let a man rest, even in this holy time.”
The Soltys bent down and picked up a bloodstained rod of iron.
“It was with this Burek was done to death.”
The thing passed from hand to hand.
“It is one of those rods out of which they make tines.”
“Perhaps stolen out of Michael’s forge.”
“The forge has been closed ever since Good Friday!”
“They may have stolen it and brought it hither: I, the Voyt, tell you so. The blacksmith is not at home: what’s to be done? This is no one’s business but mine—and the Soltys’!” He raised his voice and shouted at them to go home and not waste time to no purpose.
Little as they cared for his blustering, it was now time for church; so the crowd melted away quickly, for parishioners from other villages were dropping in already, and the bridge was rumbling with carts.
When all had gone, Bylitsa went out to the orchard, to look at his dog, talk to it softly, and try to coax it back to life.
Hanka remained lying alone in bed, when everybody had gone to church, and the hut was empty. For a time she prayed and thought of Antek; then, the old man having taken the little ones out into the road, and all being very quiet, she fell fast asleep.
Time slipped away, and she was still sleeping when, near noon, the sound of the organ playing and the people singing in unison came wafted on the breeze, and the bells tolling for the Elevation made the windows vibrate. What woke her at length was the noisy clatter of the wagons driven home at full speed along the road, past holes and ruts; for on Easter Monday it is the custom to try who will be first home after High Mass. It was a confused torrent of horses, carts and people, of whips rising and falling all the way, twinkling athwart the orchard-trees. They raced so furiously that she felt the cabin tremble, as the wind bore the clatter and the din of laughter to her ears.
She had a mind to get up and take a look outside; but her people were home now, and Yagustynka set about getting dinner ready. She meanwhile related how the church had been so crammed that half the people had to stand outside; how all the Manor folk had been there; and how his Reverence had, after Mass, called all the farmers to the sacristy to confer with them. Yuzka prattled about the way the young Manor ladies were dressed.
“Know ye that the damsels of Vola wear humps on their hinder parts, and look like turkey-cocks when they put up their tails?”
“They pad themselves with hay or rags,” the old woman explained.
“But their waists! They are drawn in like wasps. One might cut them in two with a whip. And where they stow away their bellies, none can say! Oh, I was close to them, and saw them well!”
“Their bellies? Why, they cram them in under their stays. A Manor servant, who had once been chambermaid at Modlitsa, told me that some of those damsels starve themselves, and gird their waists tight while they sleep, lest they should grow stout! At the Manors ’tis fashionable for girls to be thin as laths, with only the back parts swelled out!”
“Not so with us; lads laugh rawboned girls to scorn!”
“They are right. Our lasses should be even as ovens, all rounded out and full of such heat flowing from them that men feel warm when they come near,” said Pete, his eyes feasting on Yagna, who then was removing the pots from the fireplace.
“Why, I declare!” thundered Yagustynka; “that fright! He has just had a spell of rest and a morsel of meat; and lo, he is at once hankering for something else!”
“When such a one is at work, it is a marvel her bodice does not split at every motion!” he went on; and would have served them some further specimens of his eloquence, when Dominikova, coming in to tend Hanka, drove him from the room.
They took dinner outside in the porch, where it
