But all along the Lipka roads, on either side of the pond, the folk were noisy and swarming. The air itself wafted something of festive joy, and the people, nay, even the cattle, were full of the same. Through the frozen air that carried sound so well, there floated cries like musical tunes; laughter out of many a merry throat echoed from one end of the hamlet to the other, awakening like gaiety of heart; dogs rolled madly about on the snow, and bayed with glee, and pursued the crows that hung about the cabins; horses whinnied in unseen stalls; and cows in their byres bellowed tunefully. One might almost fancy that the snow crackled more crisply and briskly underfoot, while the sledge-runners sounded sharp along the hardened and glass-smooth roads, and the smoke went up in blue pillars straight as arrows, and the cabin-windows winked in the sun till they fairly dazzled you. Noisy children were all about, and the hum of talk was heard, and the cackling of geese that swam about in the holes made in the ice; and people were calling, calling to one another. On the roads, round about the homesteads and their belongings, folk were passing everywhere; and through the snow-whitened orchards gleamed the red petticoats of women going from hut to hut and, as they went and grazed the trees or shrubs, receiving a shower of silvery dust. On this day, even the mill did not clatter. Indeed, it was silent during the whole festival; but a pellucid ice-cold stream, led out by the sluices, ran with babbling melody; and beyond this, somewhere far away, the cries of a flock of wild ducks, wheeling in the air, arose from marshes and moors. Every cabin—Machek’s, Simon’s, the Voyt’s, and who can say how many more?—was now being aired and scoured and scrubbed, and the rooms, the passages, and even the snow in front of the huts, were strewn with fresh pine-needles; in some dwellings the hearths, grown black and dingy, had also been whitewashed. In all the huts they were busy making bread, especially the _strucle_, or wheaten bread, with poppy-seed-sprinkled crust; and this seed was also being pounded in mortars for other much-liked dainties. Yes, Yule-tide was at hand: the feast of the Divine Child, the joyful day of wondrous goodwill to men; the blessed respite from the long never-ending round of labour, to arouse the souls of men from their wintry torpor, and shake off the grey dullness of everyday life, and make them go forward joyfully and with a glad thrill of the heart, to meet the day of our Lord’s Nativity. At Boryna’s, too, the same activity, and quick going to and fro, and bustling preparation, prevailed as elsewhere. Boryna himself had been in town since the morning, to make purchases. Pete, a man whom he had taken as groom after Kuba’s death, accompanied him.