Hanka got out of their way, and drew her kerchief down over her face, but could not prevent Boryna from recognizing her at once as he drove past, whipping his horses up to get along more quickly. They dashed on, but were stopped by another snow-drift. Then he looked round and pulled up. When she was again visible and abreast of his sledge, he called out to her: “Throw your firewood in behind, and get up here: I’ll take you home.” She had been so accustomed to do his bidding that now she did it instinctively. “Bartek has given a lift to Bylitsa, who was sitting and weeping under a tree; they are close behind us.” She answered nothing, but looked round gloomily at the raging chaos of night and snowstorm as she dropped into the front seat, as yet only half conscious. Boryna eyed her with careful scrutiny. She looked so wretched that now she was a painful sight, with her livid frost-bitten face, and eyes swollen with tears, and her mouth set in firm resolve. Shivering with cold and weariness, she vainly tried to wrap herself up in her tattered shawl. “Ye ought to beware: in such a condition, an illness might easily take you.” “And who will work in my stead?” “What! go to the forest in such weather as this?” “We had no more fuel at all, and could not cook our meals.” “Are your little ones well?” “Little Peter was ill for a fortnight, but has quite recovered now, and could eat twice as much as I give him,” she answered, now at her ease and recovering from her state of prostration. Throwing her shawl back, she looked him calmly in the face, without any of the scared meekness of former times. The old man guessed that a transformation had taken place in her, and wondered at it greatly: she was no longer at all the Hanka of old. A sort of glacial repose was now to be felt in her, and her compressed lips told of inflexible firmness and strength. He no longer frightened her as of old; she spoke to him as to an equal and a stranger, without either complaint or reproach; she answered simply and to the point, in a voice which spoke of much suffering endured, with a certain hardness in her tone which the tempering fire of hidden anguish had wrought; only the gleam of her tearful azure eyes still betrayed an intensely emotional soul. “Ye have greatly changed.” “Suffering shapes the soul as the smith shapes iron—and sooner.” Her reply amazed him so, he could find nothing to say to it, and turned round to Ambrose to talk about the lawsuit with the manor. In spite of the Voyt’s promise, he had lost, and had to pay costs into the bargain. “I shall,” he said confidently, “appeal and succeed.” “That will be hard. The manor-folk have long arms, and manage to succeed everywhere.” “Against them too there’s a way—as there always is, if one waits patiently for the right moment.” “You are right, Matthias; but oh, how cold it is! Let’s go to the tavern and warm ourselves.”