At once the band ceased playing, the dances stopped; everyone promptly dispatched what food remained, and all went home—except old Ambrose, who, fairly drunk, stayed singing outside the tavern, according to his wont. No lights shone anywhere but in Dominikova’s cabin; but there, it was said, the Voyt and the Soltys sat in conference till the second cock-crow, to reconcile Yagna and Boryna. And when the whole village was fast asleep, and the land at rest (the rain having stopped about midnight), they were still deep in conference. But in Antek’s hut there was no joyous Carnival, no quiet sleep, nor any peace at all. God alone knows, and no human tongue can tell, what passed in Hanka’s mind during those long days and nights since she had met her husband outside the hut, when he forced her to go in. For that same night she had been told all by Veronka. The agony of it slew her soul within her, and it lay like a naked corpse, horrible in death. For the first day or two, she hardly stirred from her distaff and spinning-gear: though she spun nothing, only moving her hands mechanically, as one in a deathly slumber, gazing within herself, looking on the storm of sufferings that were hers, and on the miserable chaos of burning tears, wrongs borne, injustice suffered. All that time she neither ate nor slept; even her children’s cries could not recall her to herself. Veronka had pity on her, and took care of the little ones, and of her old father, too, who—to make matters worse—had fallen ill after that expedition to the forest, and lay upon the top of the baking-oven, moaning low. Antek, one might say, was never at home, going out at dawn and returning only late at night. But she now felt herself unable to say a single word to him. It was impossible: her soul, hardened, as it were, in the fire, had become like stone. Only on the third day did she wake up, as out of a horrible dream. But how changed! Coming back from that trance of death, she was in appearance no longer the same person: grey, faded, wrinkled, many a year older in looks, and now hard and rigid as though she had been carved in wood. Only her eyes glowed, cold and keen; and her lips were set hard.—So thin had she grown that her clothes hung on her as upon a peg. And thus she came back to life again. Although her former self was now burnt to ashes, she was aware within her soul of a wonderful power that she never had felt before—of a stubborn force of living and fighting, and of the settled certitude that she would overcome at last. She at once flew to her wailing children, took them in her arms, and well-nigh smothered them with kisses; and she burst with them into a long sweet flood of tears that were a true relief to her, soothing her anguish greatly.