“Get away!” she suddenly cried to the geese. “Would ye then kill your own children as swine do? Would ye?” And she called together the goslings, which were all going off into the enclosure after the mother birds. “Nay, let them run about,” said Agata; “no hawk is in sight, and I will look after them.” “Ye can scarce drag your limbs: how should you run after geese?” “Ever since I crossed your threshold, I have felt better.” “Then try.—I will get you some food. Shall I boil milk for you?” “Thanks, mistress, but on Saturdays in Lent I never take milk. Give me a pot of boiling water. I have bread with me, and shall crumble it in and eat.” In a little, Dame Klemba brought her a dish of hot water, seasoned with salt, and Agata took her meal of crumbled bread. Meanwhile the former told her all about the battle, its causes, and its end. How Boryna’s skull had been cracked by the keeper, whom Antek slew in his turn to avenge his father; how the old man had been lying insensible ever since; how others too had been badly hurt in the fight, and how little they cared for that, because they won the victory. “But,” she went on to say, “on the following Sunday, not four days after, when wet snow was falling thick, and one could hardly step out of doors, we were preparing to go to church, when the Gulbas lads came round, shouting: ‘The gendarmes are here!’ “So indeed they were—thirty of them, besides officials and justices ... a whole court!—and they quartered themselves upon the priest. Then they set about putting questions and taking notes, and bringing everybody to them under guard for examination. No one resisted; they all spoke out bravely, telling the truth as frankly as at Holy Confession.—This ended about eventide. The court was for carrying the whole village away, even the women! But there was such a crying and wailing of children that the men began to look about them for staves, and would have fought to the uttermost.... Then his Reverence must have spoken to the justices, for they left us here. Not even Kozlova did they take, though she used most evil speech to them: only the men were put in jail. And as to Antek, son of Boryna, they ordered him to be conveyed thither in bonds.” “In bonds! O Lord!” “They bound him, but he snapped the ropes asunder like tow. And all were afraid of him, who seemed as though mad with fever, or possessed with a devil. And he stood up before them, and looked them in the face, saying: “‘Make my hands and feet fast with manacles and fetters, and watch over me well.—Else I slay you all, and do to myself an evil thing!’ “He was so amazed for his father’s loss that he himself offered his hands and feet to the gyves. And thus did they carry him away. “Never shall I forget how they took him: never, till I die. And my goodman did they take likewise, and my sons, and the other men: about threescore of them.