Thus day after day, week after week slipped by, till Yule-tide, in hard incessant labour. Little by little, his mind grew calmer—frozen up, as it were: so far was he from resembling the man he had been. Folk marvelled at this, and judged him diversely. But the change in him was only external and for the eyes of men: within he remained as he was before. He worked now, and toiled hard, gave his wife every _groschen_ he earned, stayed at home of evenings, was kinder than ever, silent, peaceful; played with his children, helped his wife at home, nor ever said a cross word to anyone. But all this did not avail to hoodwink Hanka. His transformation pleased her, indeed, and she fervently thanked God for it, watching over him, attentive to the looks in his eyes to find out what he desired—the most attached and thoughtful of servants. But she would often note a mournful gleam in his eye, and overhear a low sigh that escaped him. Then her arms dropped to her sides, and her heart died within her as she sought in her mind, thinking whence the evil that was to come would proceed. Well did she know that something terrible was fermenting within him—something that he repressed only by putting forth his whole strength—something that crouched secretly, sucking, sucking the life-blood of his soul! But whatever he felt, good or evil, he said nothing. After his work he returned straight home, choosing the longer way by the other side of the pond, that he might not pass near his father’s home, not meet with ... someone. _Someone!_ Therefore, too, he stayed at home on Sundays, although Hanka besought him to come to church with her. He feared a meeting with Yagna; he felt that he should not stand it, that he never could resist. Besides, he had heard from Bartek, with whom he was not on unfriendly terms, how the village folk were always busied about him; how they watched and spied upon him at every step, as on a thief. And he had himself more than once seen eyes that peeped at him round corners, with swift peering glances,—glances which would have loved to penetrate his very soul, to search all that was therein, and explore it through and through. “The wretches! But they shall get nothing out of me, nothing!” he would say bitterly, all the more stubborn in his hate because he kept more aloof from everyone. “I need no one; I am on such terms with myself that I can scarcely bear my own companionship,” he would reply to Klemba, when the latter reproached him for never coming to see them.