“True, open-handed she was not, and she thought not a little of herself, as do all the Boryna folk; but I am sorry for her, nevertheless.” “To be just, that husband of hers is a scoundrel.” “Were it any business of mine, I’d take Yagna to task on the high road, rate her, curse her, and swinge her soundly.” “That too may come to pass—worse still, peradventure.” “The woman’s of the brood of Paches.... And her mother was just the same in her youth.” “Let us on: the wind is falling, and may go quite down ere nightfall.” Presently they all entered the forest, and separated, but so as to be within call for the home-coming. And the gloomy depths swallowed them up so entirely that they soon could see hardly anything of one another. It was a vast forest of old pine-trees, all standing close to each other, straight and slender and strong; whose trunks, overgrown with whitish-green lichens, looked like pillars of verdigris-stained copper, peering forth amidst green verdure, flecked with grey, in impenetrable ranks. Chilly mournful sounds rose up from the snow underfoot; overhead, athwart ragged pine-boughs, as through a broken thatch, the sky was visible. The wind blew above them; but at times all seemed as still as in a church, when the organs suddenly cease to play, and the chants are heard no more, and nothing is audible save deep sighs, the shuffling of feet, the mumbling of prayers in a faint dying hum: so the forest stood motionless, mute, listening, as it were, to a far-away thundering—to the wild cry of the ravaged fields which, rising up from some remote spot, was heard only as a feeble moan. By and by, however, the gale struck the forest with all its force—struck against its close-set trunks, assailing its depths, shrieking in its dim nooks, and fighting an army of giants.—Only to be defeated: its might gave way, collapsed, grew weak, died in the compact undergrowth of brushwood. The forest itself was unmoved; not a single branch waved, nor did any trunk vibrate; within, the silence was deeper yet, still more awful; only a bird or two was heard to flutter about in the shadows.