“All right, little one. Take good care of things here, and I’ll bring you a roll or something from town.” He made a pretty good meal, girt himself up, smoothed down his scanty dishevelled hair, took his whip, and looked round the room. “Is there anything I have forgotten?” He would have looked into the alcove too, but Yuzka’s eye was upon him: so he merely crossed himself, and went out. Sitting in the cart, with the reins in his hand, he gave one more order to Yuzka, who stood in the porch. “When they have done digging the potatoes, send them off to rake up the litter: you’ll find the permit stuck behind the picture.... And tell them to cut down some young fir or hornbeam: it will come in handy.” The cart had got as far as the fence, when Vitek showed himself among the apple-trees. “I had forgotten.... Vitek! Prrru, prrru! Vitek, I say! you will take the kine to the meadow.... And tend them well, or you’ll get such a flogging as you won’t forget.” “Oh, you may kiss—” the lad cried audaciously, and vanished on the other side of the barn. “None of your impudence! If I get down, you’ll see!” He turned to the right into the road by the church. The sun was by now above the cottages, with ever stronger and stronger rays. From the thatches mists rose up, and waterdrops dripped down; but in the shadows of the hedges and ditches, the frost lay white. On the pond, the thin film of morning haze had grown thinner; the waters bubbled and shone in the sunlight. In the village the round of daily toil was commencing. Folks were livelier and more spirited than usual in this bright cool morning air: some going forth in troops to dig in the fields, carrying hoes and mattocks, and baskets with provisions; some setting out to plough the stubbled fields; some with harrows in carts, and bags full of seed-corn; whilst others wended their way to the wood for litter, and bore rakes on their shoulders. And on either side of the pond the noise increased, when presently the roads became crowded with cattle driven to grass; dogs barked, men shouted, and a heavy dust which the night’s dew had but partly laid, rose in the highway. Boryna carefully threaded his way among the cattle, from time to time cracking his whip at some lamb or calf that would blunder across the filly’s path; and at last he got clear of them all, and approached the church, which was screened by a great rampart of limes and plane-trees, with dull yellow foliage. Thence he passed on to a broader road, planted on either side with giant poplars. The bell had been rung to announce that mass was beginning, and the muffled notes of the organ came from within; he doffed his hat and breathed a devout prayer. The way was solitary, and strewn with fallen leaves, which covered, as with a carpet of dead gold, all its deep holes and ruts, and the gnarled roots about its surface: a carpet striped by the falling shadows of the poplars, as the sun shone across the way.