During her peregrinations Zoska had behaved with complete indifference; when she was taken to a new place she would worry at first whether she would find work. After that she became apathetic and slept the greater part of the time, on her plank bed, or waiting in corridors and prison-yards. It was all the same to her. At times she began to long for freedom and her child, and then she fell into accesses of fury. Now they were sending her back under escort of two peasants; one carried the papers relating to her case, and the other had come to keep him company. She had a boot on one foot and a sandal on the other, a sukmana in holes, and a handkerchief like a sieve on her head. She walked quickly in front of the men, as if she were in a hurry to get back, yet neither the familiar neighbourhood nor the hard frost seemed to make any impression on her. When the men called out: 'Heh! not so fast!' she stood as still as a post, and waited till they told her to go on. 'She's quite daft!' said one. 'She's always been like that,' said the other, who had known her a long time, 'yet she's not bad at rough work.' A few versts from the village, where the chimneys peeped out from beyond the snowy hills, they came upon the little cortege. The attendants, noticing something unusual in the look of it, stopped and talked to the Soltys. 'Look, Zoska,' said the latter to the woman who was standing by indifferently, 'that is your little girl.' She approached without seeming to understand; slowly, however, her face acquired a human expression. 'What's fallen upon them?' 'They have been frozen.' 'Why have they been frozen?' 'Slimak drove them out of the house.' 'Slimak drove them out of the house?' she repeated, fingering the bodies, 'yes, that's my little girl, she's grown a bit; whoever heard of a child being frozen to death?... she was meant to come to a bad end. As God loves me, yes, that's my girl, my little girl--they've murdered her; look at her!' she suddenly became animated. 'Drive on,' said the Soltys, 'we must be getting on.' The horses started, Zoska tried to get into the sledge. 'What are you doing?' cried her attendants, pulling her back. 'That's my little girl!' cried Zoska, holding on. 'What if she is yours?' said the Soltys, 'there's one road for you and another for her.' 'She's my little girl, mine!' With both hands the woman held on to the sledge, but the peasant whipped up the horses and she fell to the ground; she grasped the runners and was dragged along for several yards. 'Don't behave like a lunatic,' cried the men, detaching her with difficulty from the fast-moving sledge; she would have run after it, but one of them knelt on her feet and the other held her by the shoulders. 'She's my little girl; Slimak has let her freeze to death.... God punish him, may he freeze to death himself!' she screamed.