Gavrelo turned to her. At last she had touched him. His face was distorted with anger, and he stopped his work for a moment. “Why does she want to marry, the fool!” The words burst from him through his teeth, and he bent down to pick up his tools. He had finished the fence. Katherina stared at him. “What--what else do you expect? Oh! It is a harvest hand you are thinking of!” Then realizing that he was going, she ran to him. “Gavrelo!” she cried, “what do you say? What will you say when at the wedding Simyonka’s father will ask, ‘And what do you give Natalka as her portion?’ What will you say, Gavrelo?” Gavrelo lifted a few poles to his shoulder and slipped the hatchet into his girdle. “I told you,” he said doggedly. “Simyonka has enough!” And he walked away with his long, even stride, his sandals making deep prints in the soft earth. Katherina staggered to the newly mended fence and buried her face in her arms. “_Ach, Boshi Moi!_” she cried. With the habit of the lonely she talked to herself. Gavrelo did not tolerate neighbors. Indeed, he was hated because of his hardness and meanness. “Life is bitter,” she wept. Her own had been a cruel fate. “You have come like a beggar.” Her mother-in-law had cast it in her face. And now her own fate was to be Natalka’s fate! And why? Because Gavrelo was an unnatural father, because he was stingy and cared for nothing--but--his fields, his wheat, more and more wheat. His barns were stacked with wheat. He kept them under lock and key, and he sowed still more wheat. She raised her head and looked about. This field was to be all wheat, acres and acres. And Natalka was to go to her husband like a beggar. “They will throw it up to her, the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law. And Natalka is young; she will never be able to lift her head!” Her own head sank into her arms again. It was late when she started for the hut. The red sun hung on the very edge of the forest. She picked her way to a back road not far off which would be less soggy than the fields, though roundabout and longer. Trudging along, her eyes on the path, her sandals heavy with the mud, she at once upbraided and defended Gavrelo, and analyzed and schemed. It would take so little to give Natalka a fine portion. There, for instance, was the little pig, only a year old, but so aggressive that he had to be fed with the old hogs. Parshuchuck would be an excellent gift. He could take care of himself anywhere. Even in a litter of strange pigs he could hold his own. Also there was Chulka, a heifer, for whom no fence was too high. She used her knobby little horns with such skill that often won a long stare of surprise from the old cows. Chulka, too, could take care of herself in a strange herd. These two would be an excellent gift. It would be pleasant for little Natalka to have something of her own that was alive, in a strange home, in a strange village. Parshuchuck and Chulka might even be an example to her, not to bend her head too low.