THE PEASANTS WINTER THE PEASANTS A TALE OF OUR OWN TIMES IN FOUR VOLUMES AUTUMN WINTER SPRING[1] SUMMER[2] ----- Footnote 1: _To be published April, 1925_ Footnote 2: _To be published July, 1925_ THE PEASANTS WINTER FROM THE POLISH OF LADISLAS REYMONT [Illustration: Publisher’s Logo] ALFRED · A · KNOPF NEW YORK MCMXXV COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1925 · SET UP, ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. · ESPARTO PAPER MANUFACTURED IN SCOTLAND AND FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK. · BOUND BY H. WOLFF ESTATE, NEW YORK. · MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHER’S NOTE _The Peasants_ has been translated from the original Polish by Michael H. Dziewicki, Professor of English Literature at the University of Cracow. I wish to make special acknowledgment to Dr. A. M. Nawench of Columbia University for his invaluable assistance in seeing the work through the press. A. A. K. THE PEASANTS WINTER CHAPTER I Winter had come. In the first days, it was but trying its strength—wrestling with the autumn, and howling far away in the livid distance, like some ravenous monster. Now dawned those chilly glacial days, days of dismal and mournful dejection, lit with a dribbling feeble light; corpse-like days, when the birds flew away to the woods with cries of dread, and the waters babbled fearsomely, rolling sluggishly on, as if palsied by the terror of the cold; and the very country-side seemed to shudder, and all that was therein to look in awe towards the north and its unfathomable depths of clouds. As yet the nights were as those in autumn, full of dreary sighs and soughs; sounds as of struggling, and sudden hushes; the howl of dogs; the cracking snaps of freezing timber; the sad voices of shelter-seeking birds; horrible calls from weird woodlands and crossways, invisible in the dark; and the beating of eerie wings, and shadows lurking beneath the walls of the stupefied cottagers.