“Out of my way, you dog’s-blood Jew, or I kill you!” Antek shrieked, with such furious violence that Yankel changed colour and shrank away to let him pass. He banged the door and rushed out. CHAPTER II Towards noon it had cleared up a little, but only as if a rushlight had been kindled and whisked about among the shadows; what brightness there was vanished soon, and it grew dark again, and looked as if the snow were gathering and about to fall once more. In Antek’s hut it was extremely murky and cold and cheerless. The children played upon the bed, and prattled in whispers to each other. Hanka was so uneasy, she knew not what to do. She went fidgeting about the place, or stood outside with burning eyes, gazing over the snow. But neither on the road nor in the fields did any living creature meet her sight; only a few sledges were just visible, crawling away from the tavern to vanish both from the eye and the ear, lost in the abyss of limitless white. She sighed. If there were but a beggar passing by, that she might have someone to speak to! She set to calling together the fowls that had dispersed, seeking to roost on the cherry-trees, and made them return to their usual roosting-place; but, on going in, had some words with Veronka. What did it mean? The woman had set down in the passage a pail of hog-wash for her swine, which the dirty beasts had splashed about, and there was a large pool right in front of Hanka’s door! Without going in, she cried through the closed door: “You who hold yourself such a good housewife, see to your pigs, or tell your children to do so. I will not dirty myself with mud for your sake!” “Oh, she has sold her cow, and so she is going to raise her voice here, is she? She cannot bear mud now, the grand lady! Yet her dwelling is a pigsty!” “Never you mind about my lodgings or my cow!” “Then never you mind about my pigs; do you hear?” Hanka slammed the door: what could she reply to such a fury? One word said to her was sure to bring more than twenty in return.—She bolted the door, took out the money, and began to make up her accounts with infinite trouble, blundering again and again. She was still upset; full of resentment against Veronka, of disquietude about Antek. Often, too, she fancied she could hear Krasula lowing; and then at times memories of her girlhood at home came back to her.