For whole days, then, Lipka stood abandoned, with only a few old people to guard it. Sometimes a _Dziad_ would drag his aged limbs along the way, or a cart jog on to the mill; then all was deserted once more, and Lipka stood plunged in the ever-thickening greenery of its orchards. So the days crawled by, full of hard toil, not always warm, sometimes even snowy. Small wonder if there was no noise or quarrelling in the place: they had no time for that, and every neck was bent beneath the heavy yoke of labour. As soon, then, as morning opened its heavy eyes, and the first lark piped up, the whole village sprang to its feet with noise and din and cries of children and screams of driven geese; horses were brought out and harnessed to the plough, potatoes carted away to the fields in sacks—and lo! all was silent anew! Even Holy Mass had but a scanty attendance, and often the organ, played in an empty church, was heard only by those in the neighbouring fields, and men knelt down there to say their morning prayers when the tinkling bell announced the beginning of the service. All worked hard: yet the land seemed as untouched as when they were not there. Only a close observer could have descried here and there a plough, with horses straining forwards along the furrows—a cart moving on the field-paths—or women, like red caterpillars, digging away in the vast plain under the bright vault of sky. Around them, in all the hamlets visible above the orchard-tops—white walls on a blue-grey background—the air vibrated with roars and shouts and songs of toilers. To the very hills at the sky-line, the eye could see hosts of peasants, sowing or guiding the plough, and folk busy planting potatoes, and pillars of dust rising up on sandy soil wherever the harrow passed. The Lipka lands alone, smitten as it were with the scourge of barrenness, made a mournful exception. There they lay, alas! all but fallow; for ten women, were they to strive and sweat from daybreak till night, could not do so much as one single man. By themselves, for what were they fit? Only for delving or hoeing, to plant potatoes or flax. Over the rest of the lands the partridges piped undisturbed, ever bolder and bolder; or a hare would be seen running, but so deliberately that you could count the white flashes of its scut; or flocks of crows would fly flapping over slope and hummock. What though the days were marvellously fine, rising like golden monstrances dipped in silver light? What though, luxuriant in verdure, they brimmed over with warm fragrance, and were made melodious by the voices of many birds, where every ditch was all full of the gold of the dandelions; where every field-path was transformed into a green ribbon embroidered with daisies, and the vast plain sprinkled all over as with a rosy dust of flowers? What though each tree was oozing and dripping with the most lovely verdure, and the whole world simmered, bubbling over with the great seething of the spring!