“By no means. He was reading to me from a book with certain tales done into verse.”
“Oh. I fancied something very different indeed. His mother had begged me to seek him. … Coming this way, I look around: there is no one. … Then I think of giving a look under this pear-tree … and behold, there are my turtledoves, cooing one to another.—’Tis a very convenient spot … quite out of sight!—Aye, aye!”
Yagna broke away from her in a rage, screaming: “May your filthy tongue be struck dumb forever!”
And Kozlova cried after her: “And ye’ll always have someone to shrive you!”
X
On entering the village, Yagna at once could see that something out of the ordinary was going on. The dogs in the farmyard were barking in great excitement; the little ones, hiding in the orchards, peeped out from behind the trees and hedges; the people, though it was yet far from sunset, were fast coming in from the fields; women were whispering together in groups; every face bore an expression of disquietude, and in every eye there was a look of alarm and suspense.
“What has come about?” she asked the Balcerek girl, peering round the corner of her hut.
“I cannot say; belike soldiers coming from the forest.”
“Jesu Maria! Soldiers!” And her knees trembled with terror.
“Young Klemba,” added the Prychek girl, as she ran by, “says they are Cossacks from Vola.”
In great dismay, Yagna hurried on to her cabin, where her mother, sitting on the threshold, and spinning, was in earnest talk with several women.
“We have both seen the same thing—the men sitting in the porch, and their leader with the priest inside the house.”
“And they have sent the organist’s lad Michael to fetch the Voyt.”
“The Voyt! then it can be no trifle. Ho, ho! something is in the wind!”
“It may be they have only come to collect the taxes.”
“With such a number of men? No, they come surely for something more than that.”
“Perhaps; but, mark my words, they are here for no good!”
Yagustynka came up. “I,” she said, “can tell you why they have come.”
All crowded round her, stretching their necks out like so many geese.
“They have come to take us women into the army!” she cried with a croaking laugh that no one took up; and Dominikova remarked sourly:
“Ye must always be making some wretched joke!”
“It is you that are always making mountains of molehills! You quake so, your teeth are well-nigh falling out of your heads; yet all are greedy to hear that something is to hap! Much do I trouble about the gendarmes!”
Thereupon Ploshkova, pushing forward her portly figure, began telling them how “something had come over her as soon as she saw those carts. …”
“Be quiet! Here comes Gregory and the Voyt, running at full speed towards the priest’s house.”
Their eyes followed the two moving figures on the farther side of the pond.
“Aha! Gregory too is wanted!”
They were wrong. Gregory only pushed his brother in, but stayed himself to look at the carts drawn up there, and to question the drivers who were sitting in the porch. Then, in great distress, he ran to Matthew, who was working at Staho’s cabin, and sitting astride on one of the roof-beams, while cutting hollows in it to fix the rafters.
“Not gone yet?” he asked, cutting away as before.
“No; and the worst is, we cannot tell for whom they have come.”
“Some evil thing is certainly at hand,” old Bylitsa stammered.
“Perchance they come about our meeting. The District Official threatened us then, and the gendarmes have been to and fro, seeking to find out who it is that eggs on the Lipka folk,” Matthew said, slipping down to the ground.
“Then they are likely to have come for me!” Gregory rejoined, suddenly breathless with apprehension.
“No, I think they mean to seize Roch!” Staho asserted.
“True, they have inquired about him once already: how could I let that slip my memory?” He felt relieved for himself; but at once said, in distress for the other’s fate:
“No doubt, if they have come for anyone, ’tis for him!”
“Well, but shall we let him be taken?” shouted Matthew. “Him, that is so truly a father to us all!”
“Alas! we cannot resist them, it is not to be thought of.”
“Let him hide somewhere—and first let us warn him instantly.”
“But peradventure,” Staho remarked diffidently, “they may have come on some other errand—the Voyt’s business, for instance.”
“He must at all events be warned,” cried Gregory; and, rushing out into the rye, and working around several gardens, he soon reached Boryna’s hut.
Antek was sitting in the porch, putting jagged edges to some sickles on a small anvil. On hearing what the matter was, he started up in alarm.
“He has only just come in.—Roch!” he cried. “Here, we want you.”
“What is it?” the old man asked, putting his head out of the window; but before they had time to speak, in dashed Michael, the organist’s lad, panting very hard.
“Know, Antek, that the gendarmes are coming to you now, and are already at the millpond!”
“For me!” Roch bowed his head with a sigh.
“Jesu Maria!” Hanka shrieked from the threshold, and burst into tears.
“Oh, be quiet!” Antek whispered; he was thinking very hard. “We must hit upon something.”
“Roch!” vociferated Michael, breaking off a large branch and looking daggers. “I’ll shout the news through Lipka, and we will not give you up!”
“No fooling!—Roch! Get behind the haystack and into the rye this instant. Wiggle into some furrow, hide yourself well, and stay till I call you.—Quick! ere they are here!”
Roch snatched up some papers he had in the room and handed them to Yuzka, who was in bed:
“Hide them under yourself, do not give them up,” he whispered.
And just as he was, without hat or capote, he darted into the orchard and vanished like a stone in the waters: they could just see the rye undulating slightly beyond the haystack.
“Now, Gregory, off with you! Hanka, to your work! Go, Michael—and not a word of this!” Antek commanded, sitting down again to his interrupted
