Folk were sorely troubled at this, for they had lived in hope that, after a week or two, spring would get the upper hand and make amends for all they had suffered. And, meantime, the roofs let the rain in, the water came through walls and windows, and poured on every side. In despair they saw it creep in from the fields, fill all the ditches even to brimming over, make the roads gleam and glitter like waterways, come round through the hedgerows, and stand about the farm-yards in deep miry pools. And as the snow continued to melt and the rain to fall, the thawed ground soon softened to such a degree that in many farm-yards there were mud-pits without number at noontide, and folk had to lay boards outside the huts, or bridge the approaches with trusses of straw. Nor were the nights less unbearable, with their downpours and their black darkness—so thick that one might fancy light had gone out for ever. Few lit fires in the evening: weary of the wretched weather, all went to bed at nightfall—and Lipka was in palpable obscurity. True, in a few huts they assembled to spin: there the windows gleamed, and the low chant of the “Lamentations” quavered, together with other mournful hymns on the sufferings of Jesus. They were accompanied by the blasts, the pattering rain, and the trees lashing one against the other through the enclosures. No wonder if Lipka was lost in this sea of slush: the huts were so lowly, they scarce rose out of the ground where they crouched, dank, dingy, wretched to look upon. And, as to the lands and gardens and roads and sky, there was so much water everywhere that no one could distinguish anything from anything else. The weather was bleak, besides; it chilled the very bones, and few cared to meet it. The blasts blew, the rain pattered, the trees rocked in a solitude; for all the voices heard, Lipka might as well have been a place of the dead. Only the cattle lowed sometimes over their empty mangers; or cocks fell a-crowing; or ganders, parted from their brooding mates, would cry aloud and indignantly.