“Hold your peace, Madga.—So on, on, on I went, with the thing still running after me—and grunting! Just then the moon shone out clear, and I saw.—Lo, it was a pig, and no devil at all!... I was angered; for what did the foolish thing mean by frightening me thus? So, throwing a stick at it, I make for my home, along the path between Michael’s beetroots and Boryna’s wheat, and then between Thomas’ sown corn and Yashek’s oats (him they took to the army last year, and whose wife had a baby yesterday).... And the pig still ran after me as a dog would run, and then going on one side, and into Dominik’s potato-patch, grunted all the way. I turned off, and followed a slanting pathway across the fields: and it followed still.—I felt hot all over. My God! a strange sow!—Perhaps it was no sow! I went round nigh the crucifix, and the pig after me.... I leapt the ditch: it leaped too! Then I went to the mounds beyond the crucifix.... After me still! Then I ran by the pear-trees, and it came between my legs, and tripped me up.... I wondered whether it was a possessed pig! I had scarce got up, when it began to run on before me, with its tail in the air. ‘Away with you, then, you pest of a beast!’ I said. But it did not go from me: straight to my hut, to my very hut, did it go! It passed the fence, most honourable court! by the fence into the passage, and into the room through the open door. So help me God! Amen!” “And so you killed and ate it, did you?” the magistrate asked, with a smile. “Killed? Ate?—Well, what was to be done? One day went by: the pig would not go. A week passed, and there was no getting rid of it: it always returned, squealing. My wife gave it all she could to eat. Were we to let it starve? it was as much God’s creature as we were.... But let the most honourable court, in its wisdom, take this into account: what was I, a poor orphan, to do with it? Nobody came for the beast, we were needy people; and it ate, and ate ... as much at least as two other pigs would have done. What then? In a month, we should have been eaten out of house and home, aye, and out of our skins too.... What, then, could we do? It was a case of eat or be eaten.—So we did; but only a little of it; for they heard of it in the village, and the Dominik woman complained to the Soltys,[10] and came with him, and took everything away.” ----- Footnote 10: _Soltys_—the village headman.—_Translator’s Note._ “Everything, indeed!” interrupted the Dominik woman, angrily. “And what became of the hind quarters?” “Ask that of Kruchek and the other dogs. We had put it into the barn for the night. Now, the dogs were on the watch, and there was a hole in the door; so they got in, and had a good feast on ... what I am accused of stealing.” “So the sow went after you by herself, did it? Tell that story to an idiot, not to this court! You thieving blackguard! Who was it took the miller’s ram? who stole his Reverence’s geese? Say who?”