“I have eyes to see.” There was a long pause, each awaiting what the other would say. “Just invite me to your wedding; and I’ll sing you such a Hop-song[18] as will bring about a christening in the house in nine months....” So she began; but, seeing the old man scowl, she changed her tone. ----- Footnote 18: _Hop-song_—a very primitive sort of nuptial song.—_Translator’s Note._ “Matthias, you are doing just what you should do. Had I but sought out another husband when mine died, I should not now have to lodge in a house that is not my own. Oh, no!... But I was a simpleton, I trusted to my children: they were to board me. I made over all I had to them: and now?” “But I,” he answered in a hard voice, “will give up not one single bit of ground.” “Right.—I had to drag my cause from court to court: the few _zloty_ that I had went all that way, yet they got me no justice. And here I am in my old age, degraded to a woman of all work!—Last Sunday I went to them, only just to see my old place once more, and the orchard I had planted myself; and my daughter-in-law beshrewed me, saying I had come to spy on her! To spy, good heavens!... I thought I should fall down dead.—I went to his Reverence, that he might rebuke them from the pulpit for those words; but he told me that our Lord would make me amends for the wrong they had done. Aye, aye! of course. For him that has nothing in the world, even God’s grace is worth having; but I would far rather have property here on earth, and sleep my fill in a warm room and a feather-bed, and eat much butter and fat, and divert myself!” She continued holding forth against everything in the world, and with such violence that Boryna left her, and sallied out to the Voyt’s: for twilight was at hand. “Well, are you starting yet?” “This very minute: Simon will be here at once.” Simon appeared and all three went to the tavern, to toss off a dram and get a flask of rum for the proposal-offering.... Ambrose, who was there before them, joined them directly; but they could not drink long, for Matthias was urging them to make haste. “I shall be waiting here for you. If they drink back, then bring them hither.—And speedily!” he added, calling after them as they went out. They walked along the middle of the road, splashing through the mud. The twilight deepened, covering the land with its gossamer web of sober grey; and soon the village was no more, save for the cabin lights that began twinkling through the dusk, and the barking of the watchdogs in the farm-yards. “My fellow-messenger!” said the Voyt, after a time. “Well?” “Boryna’s wedding will, I fancy, be a grand one.” “That’s as it may be,” the other returned, in surly fashion; he was a taciturn man. “It will, I tell you—I, the Voyt, a man whom you may believe. We shall make such a match of it that.... Ha! ha!” “The mare may prove restive, if so be the stallion prove not to her liking.” “That does not concern us in any wise.”