At the foot of one of those poplars, she saw a hare crouch, dark against the snow. At her approach it fled into the snowstorm, which seized it as with the talons of a bird of prey; and it squealed pitifully in its clutch. Hanka cast a glance of sorrowful compassion at the poor beast as it fled.—She could hardly move now, and with great difficulty lifted one foot after another through the snow. The burden weighed her down inexorably; and she often fancied she was bearing on her back the winter, the snow, the winds—everything, in a word; that she had everlastingly been thus walking on, with her sad, bleeding, weary soul, and would continue thus till Doomsday. The road seemed to be lengthening out endlessly, the weight she bore crushed her; she stopped to rest ever more frequently, and with ever longer halts, half insensible as she was. Her face was burning: she cooled it with snow, rubbed her eyes, braced herself up as well as she could, and went forward to plunge again into that shrieking, bellowing conflict of the elements. But she wept abundantly; the tears gushed forth from her heart, that deep hidden fountain of sorrow: from the very bottom of her heart thus torn asunder, there came the desperate outcry of a creature hopelessly lost. Yet from time to time she would pray, uttering her prayers in a mournful tone, and breathing them out in detached words and phrases. So will a bird, freezing to death, now and again flap its wings; and then, bereft of all strength, alight upon the ground, hop forward a little, chirp a little, and settle down once more in mortal drowsiness. And so she again set to hurry on with her last remaining strength, stumbling into snow-drifts, sometimes sticking fast in them, but always going onwards, seized and scourged with a sudden fear and alarm, as she thought of her children. And now the wind brought her a tinkling sound, and the noise of sledge-runners and men’s voices, but so brokenly that, though she stopped to listen, she could not make out one word. Someone, however, was certainly driving in her direction; and at last she saw the horses’ heads distinctly through the snow-mist. “It is father-in-law!” she whispered; for she had made out the white spot on the filly’s forehead. Then she waited no longer, but turned round to go on. She had not been mistaken. Boryna, along with Vitek and Ambrose, was on his way back from the district court. They drove slowly, it being difficult to get through the drifts: in some places they had been forced to alight and lead the horses. They seemed to have been drinking, for they were talking and laughing aloud, Ambrose now and then trolling out some snatches of songs.