“Enough snow has fallen for a whole winter,” the old man said again, blowing on the window, crusted over with a thick coating of greenish ice. The eldest boy, now entering on his fourth year, began crying in bed; and from Staho’s lodgings on the other side of the hut, angry voices, the weeping of children, and the slamming of doors were heard. “Oh, Veronka is already at her morning prayers!” Antek remarked satirically, as he wound round his legs the bands he had previously warmed at the fire. “Ah, well,” the old man mumbled, “she has learned to talk—and she talks. A little too much perhaps, but she means no harm.” “Means no harm! And does she mean no harm when she beats her children? Does she mean no harm when she leads poor Staho a dog’s life, with never a good word for him?” Thus Hanka made reply, as she knelt down by the cradle to suckle her little baby, which was crying and kicking its legs about. “Since we came, three Sundays have gone by: not one day has passed without a quarrel and fighting and curses. She a woman? No, she’s a brute.... But Staho too is a mollycoddle, who lets her swinge and cuff him at will. He works like a horse, and she treats him worse than a dog.” The old man cast a deprecating look at Hanka, and was about to say a word in Veronka’s behalf, when the door opened and Staho himself, flail on shoulder, peeped in. “Antek, will you come and thresh? The organist told me to get someone for his barley, which is dry and good, and comes splendidly out of the husk.... Philip begged me to take him; but if you will, here’s work for you.” “Thanks kindly,” was Antek’s reply; “but I am not going to work at the organist’s. Philip will do very well.” “Please yourself. Good day.” At her husband’s refusal, Hanka had started up; but she at once bent down, her head over the cradle, to hide the tears that gushed forth. “What! in this fearful winter, so poor that we have only a few potatoes and salt, and having not a stiver to bless himself with ... he refuses work offered! Sits all day long in the hut, smoking cigarettes and brooding!... Or else roams and prowls about like one distraught, seeking ... what? The wind perhaps? O my God, my God!” she sobbed in her distress.... “And now, even Yankel will trust us no more: and we shall have to sell the cow.... True, it is not beseeming that he should work on another peasant’s land.... But what—what can we do?—Lord! were I a man, I would not spare myself nor shirk toil, but work till my arms dropped.... Alas! poor thing that I am, what can I do?” And she set about her household duties, now and then casting a furtive glance at Antek, who sat close to the hearth, with his eldest son on his lap, wrapped in his sheepskin, and chafed his little feet with a hand warmed at the fire, but sighed and stared moodily into the blaze the while. The old man was peeling potatoes at the window.