“On duty! We have much to do,” their leader returned, with a glance round him.
“After thieves, no doubt!” he continued, with more assurance, bringing a bottle out of the storeroom.
“After thieves—and others. … Drink to us, goodman.”
He did so. And then they set to upon the scrambled eggs, till their spoons scraped together the empty dish.
The inmates sat silent, like terror-stricken rabbits.
After cleaning the platter, they took another glass of vodka; and their leader, wiping his moustaches, said impressively:
“Is it long since ye were let out of prison, say?”
“Surely your Honour can answer that best.”
He stirred impatiently; then, on a sudden:
“Where is Roch?” he asked.
“Which Roch?” was Antek’s reply, who had understood on the spot, and felt much more at his ease.
“A certain Roch, I am told, is living with you.”
“Can your Honour be speaking of that beggar who haunts our village?—’Tis true, his name is Roch.”
The gendarme fidgeted again, and said with a threatening look:
“Play me no tricks, he is known to dwell with you!”
“Surely, he had his abode here at times, but elsewhere likewise. Where he happens to find himself, there he spends the night: ’tis his way. Now in the cabin, now in the byre, and oft beneath the hedges.—Is your Honour in any wise interested in the man?”
“I? In no wise: I ask to be informed.”
“A good honest man he is,” Hanka put in here; “nowhere does he trouble the waters.”
“We know, we know well what manner of man he is!” he grumbled emphatically, and continued to seek for information about him by various arts—even going the length of offering them snuff. But they all answered so that he was just as wise as before; and in the end, finding himself no farther on the trail, he got up in a rage, crying:
“And I declare that the man dwells in your cabin!”
Here Antek blurted out: “Think ye I have him in my pocket?”
“Boryna!” the gendarme returned fiercely; “I am here on duty: understand that!”—But he took leave in more friendly fashion, carrying with him as a present a dozen eggs and a very large pat of fresh butter.
Vitek followed them on their way step by step, and said afterwards how they had been at the Soltys’s and the priest’s, and had also tried to look in at several windows yet alight; only they could make no discoveries for the barking of the dogs, and had gone away as they came.
Now this incident had upset Antek to such a degree that, no sooner was he alone with his wife, than he told her his trouble.
She did not interrupt him by one single word, until at last he told her there remained nothing for him to do but to sell everything and go abroad—even to “Hamerica.”
Then she stood up before him, pallid, ashen-white.
“I will not go!” she cried, with a dark frown. “No, nor let my children go either, to destruction! Not I! And if you think to force me, I’ll cleave their skulls with an ax and leap down the well myself. And I am speaking the truth, so help me, O Lord God!” she screamed, kneeling down before the holy images, as one does to take a solemn vow.
“Hush, hush, dear!” Antek said. “I never meant it!”
She caught her breath, and continued, with difficulty restraining her tears:
“You will work out your time and come back. Fear nothing: I will manage all, and not lose one strip of land. Ye know me not as yet!—No, I will keep a firm grip on everything. And our Lord will help me to pull through with this affliction too.” Then she wept silently.
He too was mute for a long while. At last he said:
“God’s will be done! I must await my trial here.”
And thus did all the blacksmith’s scheming and treachery prove a dead failure.
VI
“Lie still once for all, and trouble me not!” Matthew growled, rolling over on the other side in a bad temper.
Simon was quiet for a minute; but as soon as ever Matthew was snoring again, he slipped away behind the corn-bin; for they were sleeping in the barn, and he fancied he could see the first faint streaks of morning light.
He got at the tools that had been laid ready the evening before, groping for them in the dark; and he made such haste that some fell to the floor with a loud thud, and Matthew swore in his sleep.
Darkness still reigned over the land, though the stars were paling, and a little light glimmered in the east, and the first cocks were crowing, flapping their wings.
Simon carried off all his belongings in a wheelbarrow and, creeping stealthily by the hut, made his way round the pond, where all was still, save for the bubbling of the water through the lifted sluices.
The roads lay in the shadows of the orchards, so dark that scarcely a white wall was visible in places, and the millpond could only just be made out by the reflected stars.
As he passed his mother’s cabin, he went slower, listening intently. Someone was going to and fro in the enclosure, muttering incessantly.
“Who’s there?” He recognized his mother’s voice.
He stood mute, with bated breath, not daring to stir until the old woman began to move once more, without waiting for his answer.
“She prowls by night, like a tormented soul!” he thought with a mournful sigh, and glided past in dread.
He could just see her—a shadow gliding on from tree to tree, feeling her way with her stick, and mumbling some litany as she went along.
“The wrongs she has done me is gnawing, gnawing at her heart!” he said, with a strange sense of relief at the bottom of his soul, and went out into the broad road, all ruts and hollows. Once there, he walked on speedily, as if driven onwards, caring nothing either for ruts or for holes.
He never stopped till he got to the cross where the two roads leading to Podlesie met. It was too
