They made excuses, but at last rested themselves close to the window. Yanek was unable to take his eyes off Yagna, till she hurriedly pulled her sleeves down over her arms: at which he turned crimson like a beetroot, and fumbled in his basket for the altar-breads. He took out the finest and largest packet, in a gilt paper wrapper, and containing several coloured wafers, also shaped like altar-breads. Yagna, holding her hands under her apron, took the packet, laid it on a plate beneath the crucifix, and then brought him a good gallon measure of linseed, and six eggs. “Have you been back here long, Mr. Yanek?” “Only three days: since Sunday.” “Is not that book-learning a very tedious thing?” Dominikova inquired. “Not very; but then it is only to last till spring.” “Your mother told me—I remember ’twas on my wedding-day—you were going to prepare for the priesthood.” “Yes, I—I am.—After Eastertide,” he answered, in a low tone and with downcast eyes. “Lord, what a consolation that will be to your parents! To have a priest in the family! And what an honour to the parish!” “Have you any news?” “None; and that is good news. Everything goes on quietly with us, as is usual amongst farmers.” “Yagna, I should willingly have come over for your wedding, but they would not let me.” “Oh,” Yuzka exclaimed, “what a merry-making that was! Why, there was dancing for three days running!” “Kuba died then, I am told.” “Yes, he did, poor wretch! Lost so much blood, he passed away before the priest came to shrive him. They say in the village that his soul is doing penance—that there is now some creature wandering about and groaning by night along the ways and where four roads meet, and hard by crosses, waiting for God to have mercy on it. It must be Kuba’s soul: whose else?” “What is this you say?” “Naught but the truth. I myself have seen nothing, and so cannot swear to it. But there may be things in the world that man’s mind is unable to see through, no matter how keen. For these are the works of God, not of man.” “I am sorry Kuba died. The priest himself wept when he told me.” “A most upright servant he was: quiet, religious, hard-working, never taking what was not his, and always ready to share his last garment with a poor man.” “Continual changes in Lipka. Every time I come back here, I find things quite altered.—I was at Antek’s to-day. His children are ill, misery is knocking at their door, and he himself is so changed, so thin, I hardly knew him.” To these words there was no answer. Yagna quickly turned her face away, and set about putting the loaves on the shovel, whilst her mother darted him such a glance that he felt he had touched on an unpleasant subject. With a wish to mend matters, he was seeking to start another, when Yuzka addressed him with a blush, and asked for some of his coloured wafers. “I want them for the ‘globes’ we hang up. We had some from last year, but they were quite spoiled in the racket of the wedding-feast.”