“Oh, if I could but be with you, Hanka, and never go back to them, I would sleep in the cow-house or the stable,” he answered in a husky beseeching voice. “They took my feather-bed from me; she says the children have nothing to sleep on. It is true that they were cold, so I had them with me. But my sheepskin is all torn, and does not keep me warm at all; and where I sleep there is no fire, and she will not let me have any wood, and counts every spoonful that I eat, and sends me out a-begging, and I am so weak I can scarcely crawl to your house.” “Good God! and you never told me this was so!—Why?” “How could I? she is my daughter!—And he is a good-hearted man, but very little in the house.—How could I?” “She is a hag! She took half the land and half the cabin, and the other things.... So that’s the board and lodgings she promised to give you! We must go to law: they were bound to let you have food and firing, and clothing too.—And we were to give twelve roubles a year: have we not kept our promise, say?” “Surely! For you are upright folk.—But those few _zloty_ that I have saved for my burial—I had to give them up too, I could not help it.” He said no more but sat crouching in his place, more like a heap of rags than a human being. After dinner, when the smith’s wife came with her children and greeted Hanka, the old man took up a bundle prepared for him by his daughter, and vanished unnoticed. Boryna had not come home to dine. The smith’s wife was determined to see him, nevertheless, though she should have to wait till nightfall. Hanka had set up a loom near the window, where she set to work, drawing the woof of hempen thread across the warp assiduously, and but seldom and timidly taking part in the talk between Antek and his sister. His conversation with her about their grievances did not last long, however; for Yagustynka dropped in, saying in a casual tone: “I have just come here from the organist’s, where they need me for the washing. Matthias was there only just now, together with Yagna, to invite them to the wedding. They are coming. Yes, everyone to his people: the rich to the rich. They have asked the priest also.” “What! have they dared His Reverence!” Hanka exclaimed. “Is he, then, so sacred a being? They asked him, and he said he might possibly come. Why not? Is the girl ill-looking? will the food be bad? and will there be little to drink? The miller and wife and daughter have promised. Ho, ho! There will not have been such a wedding since Lipka was Lipka!—I know, for I shall be cooking with Eva—her from the miller’s. Ambrose has killed a pig for them, and sausages are making now...” She broke off abruptly, noticing that no one asked any questions, or spoke at all. She looked round at them as they sat gloomily there, and, eyeing them attentively, cried out: “I say! there is a storm brewing here!”