“Ye are Lipka folk, are ye not? And a good many of you, I think.”
The girls came thronging round him, talking all at once.
“A flock of screeching magpies has beset me, i’ faith!” he grumbled, but listened the more attentively as they pressed closer.
So they all returned together to the village, the dziad in their midst, swinging along on his crutches, his distorted legs dangling below, and his large sightless face stretched forward above: a somewhat tubby man, with red puffed cheeks, eyes sheathed with a white film, grey bushy brows, and a huge red nose.
He listened patiently till he had learned what they were out for, and then said:
“It was these very tidings I was hastening hither to bring you! A certain unbaptized one had told me in secret that your men were coming back today; and I hoped to be first here with the good news. Besides, Lipka is a fine village to visit. Now, who are these around me?”
They told him their several names.
“Why, the very flower of Lipka, I declare!—Oho! ye were out after your young men … and found a blind old beggar instead, did you?”
“Nay!” they roared; “each of us was after her father!”
“Dear, dear! Blind I am, but not deaf!”
“We were told they were coming, and went forth to meet them.”
“Far too early. If the goodmen are home by noon, it will be well; the young fellows may not be here even at nightfall.”
“If set free together, they surely will come home likewise.”
“Oh, but the town and its pleasures! Are the girls there few? What in the world should draw them hither? Ha, ha?” he said teasingly.
“Let them enjoy themselves! We shall not fret, not we!”
“Right,” said Nastka, sulkily. “There are plenty of wet-nurses in town, and of Jews’ servants too: for those that like such, ’tis just what they want.”
“If they prefer the slums and dens of towns, they are not the men for us!”
“Have you been long away from Lipka, Father?” one of them asked.
“Very long: in fact, since last autumn. I spent the winter with kindly people, and lived at the Manor all the time.”
“What! at Vola? with our Squire?”
“With the same. I am always welcome there, both to the masters and to the masters’ dogs: all know me, and treat me well. I had a warm corner, close to a stove; and all the time I plaited straw-bands and praised the Lord. … I have put on flesh, and so has my dog.—Ho, ho! the Squire is a wise man. He’s a friend to the dziads, for well he knows they will share all they have with him. Ha! ha!” He shook with laughter, and blinked his blind eyelids as he added:
“But when God sent the springtime back again to us, it irked me to dwell in their chambers. … I longed for the peasants’ huts and the wide world.—Ah, this drizzling rain! it is a shower of gold, warm, abundant, fertilizing; making the young grass smell sweet throughout the land.—But whither are ye running, girls?”
He heard their footsteps as they scampered off, leaving him close to the mill, and called them once more, but to no purpose. They had seen women going by to the Voyt’s, and flown that way.
About half the village was there by this time, eager for some positive news.
The Voyt, who it seemed had just risen, was sitting in shirt and nether garments on his doorstep, calling to his wife for his boots, and wrapping his feet in foot-clouts, used instead of socks.
All rushed at him, breathless, greedy, and impatient to the last degree.
He let them talk, put on his grease-anointed boots, washed his face in the passage, and then, while he combed his thick fell of hair at the open window, answered them flippantly:
“Want the boys so much, do ye?—Have no fear: they will be home today most certainly.—Mother, hand me the paper the constable brought in; it is behind the picture.”
He turned it about, and tapped it with his fingers, saying:
“Here it is, as plain as noonday.—‘The Christian inhabitants of Lipka, commune of Tymov, county of. …’—Here, read it yourselves! Your Voyt tells you they are returning, and return they will.”
The paper he flung them passed from hand to hand, and though no one could make out a single letter, they knew it to be official, and, staring at it with joy mingled with dread, passed it from hand to hand till it got to Hanka, who took it in her apron and returned it.
“Good friend,” she asked the Voyt timidly, “are they all to be freed—all?”
“So it is written, and so must it be!”
“My dear,” said the Voyt’s wife, “come in here out of the rain, you will be wet through”; but Hanka had no mind to stay, and, throwing her apron over her head, was the first to withdraw.
She walked slowly, however, being rent with conflicting joy and terror.
“Antek—Antek will be here!” she said to herself, and a strange faintness came over her, and she was fain to hold to a fence not to fall. She struggled for breath a long while, and felt weak even to swooning.—“Antek is coming—coming back!” and she would have cried aloud with delight, but for a sense of dread, of disquietude, of blind uncanny fear that surged up within her heart!
Slowly she plodded on, holding to the fences. The whole road was full of women, flushed with exhilaration, and uttering roars of laughter, and screams and exultant shouts. Some, heedless of the drizzle, had gathered to talk outside the huts; some stood by the pond: all were greatly excited.
Yagustynka met her.
“So, ye know at last?—Well, this is good news. We have been waiting for it so long that, now
