In a very short time indeed Antek was at work, cutting off the projecting spurs, and hewing the log to a rectangular shape along marks made with tar by Bartek. But he was taciturn and moody, and resentful of having—he, who was a Boryna!—to do the biddings of such a one as Matthew.
“Not bad, your work, not bad at all!” Bartek remarked.
And indeed his work was excellent: the art of fashioning logs was not unknown to him. But it was hard labour for one unaccustomed to it, and after a time he was out of breath, and perspiring to such an extent that he took his sheepskin off. But the frost was hard and held pitilessly; he had constantly to stand and work deep in the snow; his hands were so benumbed, they almost stuck to the ax-handle, and the time seemed so long to him, he could scarcely hold out till noon.
Yet he would take neither bite nor sup for dinner, only dry bread and river water; nor would he even enter the mill, for fear lest he should meet some acquaintance, come to bring corn and awaiting his turn. He stayed out in the frozen air, sitting close to the wall as he crunched his bread and gazed up at the sawmill shed, built over the river, one of its sides touching the main building, so that the stream from the four mill-wheels swept under it with a great rush of green water, making the shed above to vibrate.
But he had not yet rested properly, nor had a good breathing-space, when Matthew, who had dined with the miller, shouted as he came out:
“To work, men! To work!”
So, much against his will, and groaning over the shortness of his noonday rest, he was forced to pull himself together and once more take up what he had to do.
All were in lively movement and worked briskly; the frost was so intense, and Matthew urged them with so much zeal.
The mill clattered unceasingly; beneath its wheels, all overgrown with icicles like a long greenish mane, the stream went rushing noisily on. The saws rasped away with continuous crackling harshness, as the sound of one biting glass to bits, and they spat the yellow sawdust forth. Matthew was everywhere, active and indefatigable, always shouting and urging the toilers to hurry up. He filled the whole place, nimble as a goldfinch pecking at hempseed; his short red-striped spencer, his grey sheepskin cap, were seen flying about over the trodden snow covered with chips, where they were getting the logs ready—ordering, scolding, laughing, joking, whistling, and working as hard as any; but for the most part on the platform close to the saws. For this sawing-shed had no sidewalls, only a roof; so that its whole interior was visible from outside. It rose above the river on four stout piles, against which the current rushed with such force and fury that the roof, made of reeds and resting only on those piles, often trembled like a wisp of straw in a gale.
“A good craftsman he is, that fellow!” quoth Antek, with unwilling recognition.
“And well paid too!” Bartek growled in reply.
They beat their arms against their chests to keep off the increasing cold, and went on working silently.
Of workmen there were enough. Two were at the saws, rolling the sawn logs down to the yard and dragging up fresh ones; two more were cutting off the one end of each log that had been left untouched, and making the sawn planks into piles or carrying into a shed those too thin to bear the outside cold; and a couple of others were stripping the bark off oak and fir and pine logs. To these last, Bartek used often to shout in jest:
“Devil take you, how ye skin them! Ye’ll be pastmasters in dog-flaying, belike!”
But they objected to such jokes, for they never had anything to do with the dog-killer’s craft.
All these men Matthew kept so hard at work that they could only seldom and by stealth find means to run round to the mill, warm their freezing hands, and come back at a gallop, pressed hard by the work itself.
Twilight was nearly over when Antek crawled home, so weary and broken that every bone in him ached. After supper he went to bed at once and, falling asleep, slept as one dead.
Hanka had no heart to inquire about anything, but tried to make him as comfortable as she could, keeping the children quiet, asking her father to make no noise with his boots, and walking barefooted in the room herself; and when he prepared at daybreak to go to work, she boiled a pot of milk for him to take with potatoes for breakfast, that he might feed better and be warmed.
“Confound it!” he declared; “my bones ache so, I cannot move about.”
Bylitsa remarked that this was only because he was not yet accustomed to, and that it would soon pass off.
“Of course it will pass off: I know that.—Hanka, will you bring me my dinner?”
“I will, I will: why should you come hither so far?”
He then started at once, the work being due to begin with the day.
Many a day of hard and weary toil followed.
Whether the frost baked the ground at the height of its fierceness, or the gusts and snow-charged gales were blowing, or a thaw came, and they were forced to stand the livelong day in the melting slush, while the bleak damp cold entered their very marrow, or the snow fell so that Antek could hardly see his ax—they had to work all day long till every vein and sinew of the
