The village was seething with life and crowds of people. On the road at either side of the pond, the dust flew and carts rattled; and lowing cattle stood knee-deep in the pond, drinking at leisure and lifting their ponderous heads, while from their jaws streams of water trickled down like strings of opals. Meanwhile, on the farther side, washerwomen were at work, and the bats they wielded clattered loudly on the linen they were beating.
“Antek, please split the firewood for me; I cannot manage it by myself,” said his wife timorously, for the man thought nothing of treating her to an oath—nay, even to a blow—on the slightest pretext.
He did not so much as reply, feigning not to have heard her. She dared not repeat her request, but went to hack off such splinters of firewood as she could, while he, moody and spent with a long day’s hard work, sat looking over to the other side of the pond, where a large cottage shone with whitewashed walls and windowpanes that reflected the sunset glow. A low stone fence, over which some clusters of dahlias nodded their heads, standing out vividly on the white background of cottage wall, ran round the garden; and in front of the house a tall figure was seen to pass from beneath the orchard trees, disappearing in the passage before it could be recognized.
From the porch where he sat, Antek heard his father’s snores and growled fiercely. “The Master sleeps; and you, toil on, labourer, toil on!”
He went out into the yard and eyed the cow again.
“She was father’s cow, but it is also a loss for us,” he remarked to his wife, who had left off hacking wood and gone to the cart which Kuba had now driven home.
“The pits are not yet ready for the potatoes; we must dump them upon the threshing-floor.”
“But father said you were to flay the cow and quarter it on the threshing-floor, with Kuba to help you.”
“There will be room enough for both cow and potatoes,” muttered Kuba, throwing the barn door wide open.
“I,” said Antek, “am no slaughterhouse workman, that I should flay carcasses!”
No more was said; the potatoes rattled noisily on the barn-floor.
The sun was down, but the dark blood and dead gold of the afterglow were still mistily reflected in the pond; and the quiet waters just trembled, shimmering ruddily with a drowsy murmur.
Presently the village was lost in shadows and plunged in the deep stillness of an autumnal night. The huts seemed smaller, as though sunk into the ground or melted into the trees that hung dreamily above them, or made one with the grey fences surrounding them. Antek and Kuba were carrying the potatoes. Hanka and Yuzka, busy with their household duties, were driving the geese home or feeding the swine that came grunting for food into the passage. Then the cows wanted milking. Vitek had just come home with them from the pasture-lands, and had put a little hay on the racks before them, that they might remain quiet while being milked.
Yuzka had just begun with the first cow, when Vitek asked her in a low trembling voice: “Yuzka, is master very angry?”
“Oh, Lord! that he is! He means to give you a thrashing!” she answered, turning her face to the light and putting out her hand, for the cow, tormented by flies, was whisking her tail, which struck the girl.
“But was it my fault if the forester drove us out? He would have given me a beating, too, but I got away. And she lay down and lowed and moaned, so I came back with her.”
He said no more, but she heard him sniffling and weeping quietly.
“Vitek! you are crying like a calf. Don’t! Is it the first time father has thrashed you?”
“No, indeed, but I can’t bear being thrashed; I am always afraid.”
“How silly! A great husky fellow, and afraid? But I’ll explain it all to Father.”
“Will you really, Yuzka?” he exclaimed joyfully.
“I will, Vitek; only fear no more!”
“If you will—then here’s a bird for you,” he whispered, much pleased, and took a marvellous toy out of his bosom. “Just look how it moves, all by itself!”
He placed it on the threshold and wound it up. The bird, lifting up its long legs and shaking its head, began to walk.
“Oh Lord! it’s a stork! and it moves as if alive!” she cried out in wonder and, setting her milk pail aside, crouched down and gazed on in rapture.
“Oh, how clever you are to have made it! and it moves by itself, does it?”
“By itself, Yuzka; only I wind it up with this wooden peg. And see! it is strutting about like a gentleman after dinner!” He turned it about. The bird, lifting up its long legs, with comical gravity, strutted on, moving its neck back and forth.
They both started to laugh, heartily amused by these movements; and from time to time Yuzka glanced admiringly at the boy.
Suddenly Boryna raised his voice, calling to Yuzka from outside the cabin.
“Here I am,” she answered.
“Come to me.”
“I can’t; I’m milking.”
“Well,” he said, “I am off to the Voyt,” and added, peeping into the dark shed: “That, that there bastard, isn’t he here?”
“Oh, Vitek do you mean? He is gone with Antek,” she replied hastily and with uneasiness, for Vitek, terrified, had come to crouch behind her.
“He has run off! … A rank beast he is … to let such a cow be lost!” he snarled, returning to the hut to put on his new white sukmana, and a high-crowned black hat. Then, buckling on a scarlet girdle, he set off in the direction of the mill.
“So much work still to do!” he said to himself as he walked
