The room was now getting dark, for but little light could filter through its tiny windows, the eaves that overshadowed them, and the trees of the orchard beyond. Only the sheen of the glass that covered the holy images hanging in dark rows from the whitewashed walls, could be seen. The room, though large, looked smaller on account of the low ceiling, with the great beams supporting it, and the amount of furniture which filled the whole place, leaving only a little free space about the big penthouse fire-place that stood close to the passage wall. Boryna took off his boots there, then entered a dim alcove, and closed the door behind him. He removed a shutter from a small pane of glass, and the sundown at once flooded the closet with blood-red light. It was a small lumber-room, crowded with household articles. Poles were fixed across it, from which hung many a striped cloth and _sukmana_;[8] there were piles of grey spinning-yarn, and fleeces rolled into dingy bales, and sacks of feathers. He took a white _sukmana_ and a scarlet girdle, and then for a long time fumbled in certain tubs full of grain; also in a corner, underneath a heap of odds and ends—leather and iron fumbled together. But, hearing Hanka in the next room, he quickly replaced the shutter, and again started groping in the tubs of corn. ----- Footnote 8: _Sukmana_—a long coat worn by Polish peasants.—_Translator’s Note._ His supper, an enormous pot of cabbage stewed with fat bacon, was now smoking on a bench just beneath the window. The odour of that mingled in the air with the smell of scrambled eggs in a big dish close by. “Where did Vitek take the cattle this morning?” he asked, cutting off a mighty piece from a loaf of bread as large as the largest sieve. “To the manor copse; and the forester drove them out.” “The carrion! It is they who have killed Red-and-White!” “Yes, she was so tired and overheated with running that something inside her got inflamed.” “Those beggarly dogs! We have a right to graze our cattle there. It is down in black and white, in letters as large as an ox: yet they always drive us away, and say we have no right there.” “They have done the same to others, too. They have beaten up Valek’s boy, too, most sorely.” “Ah! I shall go to court, or else to the Commissioner. She was worth three hundred _zloty_, if she was worth a _grosz_!” “Surely, surely,” assented Hanka, greatly relieved to see her father less angry with her. “Tell Antek that as soon as they have brought the potatoes in, they must see to the cow—skin her and cut her up. I shall lend a hand when I get home from the Voyt’s. Hang the quarters from the rafters, out of the reach of dogs and vermin.” Having finished his meal, he got up to dress for the visit, but felt so heavy and drowsy that he flung himself on the bed, just as he was, for just forty winks of sleep.