They arrived from Polne Rudki in a compact mass, great tall fellows, ponderous, yet active, all flaxen-haired, all clad in blue-black capotes; their women comely, every one of them, adorned with “double” aprons, and having for headgear caps underneath red kerchiefs. Next came in straggling knots of twos and threes, the men of Modlitsa: poor sickly wretches, strengthless creatures, in grey patched capotes, and all bearing sticks, for they had come on foot. Of these the common tavern joke was that they lived on mud-fishes only, because their lands were miry and intersected with marshes, and their garments smelt of the peat they used for fuel. From Vola, too, came some, by separate families, like the juniper-bushes that always grow in thick clumps and close together: none of them tall, but all of middle height, stumpy and not unlike sacks of corn, yet lively fellows: great talkers, most stubbornly litigious, given to fighting, and spoilers of the forests. They were in grey capotes, with facings of black braid, and red girdles. There, too, was the “nobility” of Rzepki, which, as evil tongues say, “has only a bag and a bundle, one cow for five and one cap for three”; they came all in one band, taciturn, looking down and askance at everyone they met. Their womenfolk, dressed like manor-people, very much pranked out, very handsome, white of complexion and voluble of tongue, walked in their midst, and were treated by them with the utmost courtesy. Directly after them entered the men of Przylek, tall, slender and strong as trees in a pine-forest, and so decked out as to make the eye water: white capotes, red waistcoats, shirts adorned with green ribbons, breeches striped with yellow bands; and they pushed forwards, giving way to no one, till they got quite close to the altar. And then, almost the last of all, like so many squires, in walked the people of Debie. They were but few; each went apart from the others, strutting proudly forwards, and took his place in the pews next to the high altar, having precedence of everyone; self-confident, because wealthy. Their womenfolk carried prayer-books, and wore white caps tied under the chin, and jackets of dark-coloured cloth.—And then there were also men from the more remote hamlets, from many a little cluster of huts, from sawmills, and from manors too—but who could count them all? And in this multitude, pressed and surging and rustling like a wood in a breeze, the white capotes of the Lipka men and their women’s red kerchiefs were conspicuous. The church was full, even to the very last place in the porch, and anyone who came late had to pray outside under the trees in the cold. Now the priest began the first mass, and the organ pealed forth, while all the people swayed to and fro, and bowed down, and knelt before the Divine Majesty.