“Very well.—Having spent so much, I can spend a little more.—But ye should know that only a blacksmith should ‘strike while the iron’s hot.’ The man who would overcome must take happenings coolly, and possess his soul in patience.” By the time they had come to the village, the twilight had deepened into thick darkness, and in the dusky air the houses they passed by were indistinguishable; but the storm was slowly subsiding. Boryna stopped the horses at the path to Hanka’s cabin, and got down to help her to get the bundle on her back; when she had alighted, he said in her ear: “Come round and see me—to-morrow, if you like. I know you are badly off; that scoundrel drinks away all his earnings, leaving you and the children to starve.” “But ye drove us out; how can I dare return?” “You speak foolishly.—I tell you, come!” Choking with emotion, she kissed his hand, unable to utter a word. “Will you come?” he asked, in a strangely kind and tender voice. “I will, and thankfully; since ye order me, I will come.” He whipped the horses up, and at once turned off to the tavern: while Hanka, not waiting for her father, who was just alighting from Bartek’s sledge, hastened back to her hut. It was dark as pitch there, and seemed even colder than out of doors. The children slept curled up in the feather-bed. She set busily about to make the fire and prepare supper, but was all the while full of her extraordinary meeting with Boryna. “No! Were he on his death-bed, I must not go: Antek would make me pay too dear!” she cried out angrily. But other thoughts succeeded presently, some of revolt against her husband. Had anyone in the world made her suffer so much as he? True, Boryna had made over land to that swinish woman, and had driven them away. But Antek had fought with him first, and had been continually snarling at him, so that the old man lost patience. So long as he lived, he had the right to do with his own land as he pleased.—And how tenderly he had asked her to come just now! ... and inquired about the children, and everything!—Yes, and never, had not Antek gone after that woman, would there have been half this misery and humiliation.... That at least was not in any wise the old man’s fault. And as she went on musing, her resentment against Boryna began to abate. In then came Bylitsa, half frozen and terribly exhausted. He had to warm himself by the fire for an hour at least, before he could say how he had been unable to go any farther, and possibly might have been frozen to death under that tree but for Boryna. “He saw me, and would have put me on his sledge; but when I said you were on the road ahead, he left me to Bartek, and drove on to catch up with you.” “Was it so? He never told me that.” “He is not a hard man really, but would have folk think he is.”