The fire was leaping up the chimney, lighting the big room, making the glazed picture-frames glisten, and giving a semblance of motion to the many globes made of coloured wafers that dangled from the grimy, smoke-blackened rafters. In the middle there lay a heap of cabbages, round which, in a wide semicircle, with faces turned towards the hearth, a good many girls and some women of maturer age sat side by side, stripping the cabbages of their outer and withered leaves, and throwing them on to a great sheet that was spread out under the window. Having warmed her hands at the fire, Yagna took her clogs off, and at once sat down to work at the end of the row, next to old Yagustynka. The room soon grew noisier, more men and women coming in: some of the former, together with Kuba, helping to bring the cabbages in from the barn, but for the most part only smoking cigarettes and grinning at the lasses, or cracking jokes together. Yuzka, though hardly in her teens as yet, presided over the work and the fun; for old Boryna had not come home, and Hanka was as usual flitting about everywhere like a moth. “Why, the room glows like a field of red poppies!” exclaimed Antek, who, having rolled several barrels into the passage, had now set the cabbage-cutter by the fire, but a little on one side. “Bah! they are dressed up as though for a wedding!” remarked an elderly woman. “And Yagna looks as if she had been washed in milk,” Yagustynka said, in a spiteful tone. “Let me be, will you?” the girl whispered, flushing deeply. “Rejoice, O ye lasses,” the old woman continued; “for Matthew is back from his wanderings. And now will the time begin for music, and dancing, and trysts in the orchards!” “He has been absent all the summer.” “Yes; building a farm-house at Vola.” “A grand master-builder: could build a castle in the air,” said one of the farm-hands. “And achieve a bantling in less than nine months,” observed Yagustynka. “Always speaking against somebody, you are!” one of the girls protested. “Take heed lest I choose to speak of you!” was the retort. “Have you heard them say the old wanderer has come to Lipka again?” “He will be with us to-night,” Yuzka boasted. “He was away for three years.” “Yes, at the Holy Sepulchre.” “Fiddlesticks! Who saw him there? He lies like a gipsy, and only fools believe him. Just like the smith, telling us what he has read in the papers about foreign parts.” “Do not say that, Yagustynka. His Reverence himself told Mother that the man was there.” “Ah, we all know that Dominikova’s other home is the priest’s house, and whenever his Reverence has a stomachache, she knows all about it.” Yagna said not a word, but would have loved to knife the old hag, for her gibe was the signal of a burst of laughter. But just then Ulisia, Gregory’s wife, leaned over towards Klembova and asked her whence the man was.