But the whole village was out, busy cutting the cabbages, and conveying them home. They were housed everywhere, on threshing-floors, in passages, in dwelling-rooms, and in some cases, even under the eaves—bluish-green cabbage-heads were to be seen by hundreds. They made haste, for it was continually raining, and the ways were all fast becoming sloughs of mire, and impassable. That day, they were cutting Dominikova’s plantation. Yagna, along with Simon, had been there since morning, for Andrew had stayed at home to mend the roof. Evening was at hand, and the old housewife again and again came out, looking towards the mill, and listening for the sound of their coming. But the work was still going on busily in the low-lying plantation beyond the mill. Over the meadows stretched a dense fog; only in places, wide ditches gleamed, full of grey turbid water; and long bands on the higher ground where the cabbages grew, here of a pallid green, there of a rusty red. About these flitted dimly the crimson petticoats of women, piling up heaps of newly cut cabbages. In the misty distance, close to the river that ran frothing among thickets of brushwood, there rose many a heap of dull brown peat. Here the carts were stationed; they could come no nearer, because of the quaggy nature of the soil, and every sheetful of cabbages had to be taken to them as a bundle carried on the back. In some fields cutting was over already, and the people were going home; from patch to patch, ever louder and louder, their voices sounded through the fog. Yagna had only just got through with the work. She was tired out, very sharp-set, and completely drenched to boot. Even her clogs were streaming with wet, for they sank more than ankle-deep into the dun-coloured peaty soil, and she often had to take them off and pour the water out. “Simon! be quick now! I can feel my limbs no more!” she called out wearily; but, seeing that the young man was unable to lift his burden, she impatiently seized the great bundle, raised it on to her back, and carried it off to the wagon. “A big fellow like you—yet with the loins of a woman after childbed!” She spoke scornfully, as she poured the cabbages out into the straw at the bottom of the cart. Simon, much abashed, muttered, growled, scratched his head, and put the horse to. “Hurry now, Simon!” she cried, swiftly bearing one huge bundle after another to the cart. But night fell, the shades grew blacker, the rain fell heavier, pouring upon the pulpy ground and into the ditches with a sound as of dropping corn. “Yuzka! have you done for to-day?” she cried to Boryna’s daughter, who had been cutting along with Hanka and Kuba. “Yes, we have. Time to go home: the weather is frightful, and I am wet through. Are you going too?”