“Want the boys so much, do ye?—Have no fear: they will be home to-day most certainly.—Mother, hand me the paper the constable brought in; it is behind the picture.” He turned it about, and tapped it with his fingers, saying: “Here it is, as plain as noonday.—‘The Christian inhabitants of Lipka, commune of Tymov, county of....’—Here, read it yourselves! Your Voyt tells you they are returning, and return they will.” The paper he flung them passed from hand to hand, and though no one could make out a single letter, they knew it to be official, and, staring at it with joy mingled with dread, passed it from hand to hand till it got to Hanka, who took it in her apron and returned it. “Good friend,” she asked the Voyt timidly, “are they all to be freed—_all_?” “So it is written, and so must it be!” “My dear,” said the Voyt’s wife, “come in here out of the rain, you will be wet through”; but Hanka had no mind to stay, and, throwing her apron over her head, was the first to withdraw. She walked slowly, however, being rent with conflicting joy and terror. “Antek—Antek will be here!” she said to herself, and a strange faintness came over her, and she was fain to hold to a fence not to fall. She struggled for breath a long while, and felt weak even to swooning.—“Antek is coming—coming back!” and she would have cried aloud with delight, but for a sense of dread, of disquietude, of blind uncanny fear that surged up within her heart! Slowly she plodded on, holding to the fences. The whole road was full of women, flushed with exhilaration, and uttering roars of laughter, and screams and exultant shouts. Some, heedless of the drizzle, had gathered to talk outside the huts; some stood by the pond: all were greatly excited. Yagustynka met her. “So, ye know at last?—Well, this is good news. We have been waiting for it so long that, now it has come, I feel stunned.—Have you seen the Voyt?” “Aye; he says it is true; has even shown us the paper.” “Then—then all must be right!—Glory to Thee, O Lord! the poor men will come back ... our farmers will return to us!” she said fervently, clasping her hands. From the dim eyes there dropped tear after tear: which made Hanka wonder not a little. “Why, I expected ye would be angry about this, as about everything else: and behold, ye are weeping. Oh, wonderful!” “What would ye? Can anyone be wroth at such a time? True, now and again, out of sheer bitterness, I let my tongue wag; but there is something else at the bottom of my heart that makes me, willy-nilly, rejoice or grieve with other folk. Nay, one cannot live quite separated from all....” Now they were nearing the smithy, where hammers were clinking in cadence, flames of a peach-red hue flying out of the forge, and the blacksmith, trundling a red-hot tire, made it shrink in cooling upon a wheel that lay close to the wall. At the sight of Hanka, the smith stopped, drew himself up, and fixed his eyes on her face.