“Good for nothing in the world but weep, weep, weep again!—Now, forwards and away!” he said, with a glance that swept the snowy wilderness round him. Seized with a strange longing, he felt himself urged on, rejoicing in the thought of unknown hamlets and a new life in a fresh world. The feeling came upon him unexpectedly, and bore him away, as a suddenly swollen torrent carries with it a weakly-rotted shrub, that can neither make head against it nor remain motionless. An hour before, so far from making up his mind to go, he had never so much as entertained the thought. Ah! but now he would fly—fly away like a bird, go anywhither—to the forests, aye, and to the undreamed regions beyond them. Truly, why should he stay here to waste his life? what had he to expect here? The memories of the past had eaten him up, dried his heart: for what reason, then, should he cleave to them?—The priest was a good man, and had pointed out clearly to him that he stood no chance in an action against his father, which would besides be costly.—Vengeance?—That might wait till the right time: no man had ever yet wronged him with impunity. So now ... let him go on—straight before him, no matter whither, if far enough from Lipka! But whither first of all? He now stood at a bend of the poplar road, gazing, not without some hesitation, over the fields which faded in the misty remoteness. “I shall go through the village and along the road beyond the mill.” And he at once started that way. Half a field’s length before striking off the road, he had to turn aside; for under the poplars and down the middle of the way a sledge was rushing straight in his direction, with a cloud of snow-dust and a sharp jingling of bells. It was Boryna, driving with Yagna. The horses tore along with lusty hoofs, the body of the sledge tossed like a feather behind them. The old man whipped them besides to make them go faster, and urged them on. He was speaking some words, too, and laughing! Yagna was talking in a loud voice, when she suddenly beheld Antek. Each for an instant looked into the other’s eyes—and then had gone past. The sledge flashed by, and was engulfed in the snowstorm it had made; Antek stood in the same spot, looking round at them, and motionless. Now and again they appeared out of the cloud of snow-dust; Yagna’s dress fluttered red in the wind; now the bells would tinkle louder, and again fainter, inaudible, lost somewhere on that vast white plain, beneath the arch of frosted boughs and between the colonnade of dark trunks that sustained them.... These stood, as it were, drooping in a row, in their long and weary uphill procession towards the forest. But Antek was always aware of her eyes. They floated before him; they appeared, in the midst of the snow—everywhere—with that look of terror and of sadness; dreamy and pleased at once; keen of glance and laden with the hot fire of life!