Looking into the stable, she saw, with yet greater annoyance, that the mare was biting at the empty manger, and the colt, in a most filthy state, eating straw out of its litter. “To see this would have broken Kuba’s heart!” she said, putting hay in the racks for both, and patting their soft warm nostrils. But here she broke down. A sense of depression took hold of her, and she felt she must cry; so, sitting down by Pete’s truckle-bed, she gave way, and wept aloud.... She knew not why. All her energy had collapsed, her heart felt heavy as a stone. Her fate was too much for her, and not to be struggled against. Completely alone in the world and forsaken, her life was as a tree growing in a windy place, exposed to every evil blast! No one even to complain to; and no end of her ill fortune in sight: only eternal mortification and sorrow; only endless trouble, and looking forward to worse things still! The colt licked her face; and letting her head drop upon its neck, she burst out crying afresh. Successful farming—respect paid her by all—what did it signify, if she had not one instant of internal happiness? She went back to the hut. The baby was once more screaming for her breast. Having satisfied it, she looked out vacantly through the window, dingy with a sweat of trickling drops. But the baby still whimpered and wailed uneasily. “Hush you, little one!—Father’s coming, my boy, and will bring you a toy, and you’ll ride on his knee, because he’s set free, and how happy we’ll be!” She walked to and fro in the room, singing and rocking him in her arms. “Perhaps he is really coming!” she repeated to herself, and stopped on a sudden. She flushed, straightened her stooping shoulders, and thought to go to the store-room and cut him a piece of ham, and then to the tavern for vodka.... But the smith’s words echoed within her bleeding heart, and swooped down, tearing it as with the sharp talons of a hawk. She stopped dead, looking round her as for help: unable to tell what to do, what to think even! “O Lord! what if he should never come back?” she moaned, raising her hands to her head. As the children were noisy and quarrelsome, she put them out and prepared breakfast, about which Yuzka, popping her head in more than once, had been greedily expectant. Tears and grief had to be thrust back again; the yoke of daily labour, pressing heavily on her soul, reminded her that her work could not be put off. She did her best, though her legs shook under her; only from time to time she dropped a tear, and looked wistfully out into a dimly seen world. “Is that Yagna going to help in potato-planting?” Yuzka cried through the window. Hanka left the pot of beetroot soup on the hob, and hurried over to the other side of the hut. The old man lay on his side, seemingly contemplating Yagna, who was combing her long bright hair before a looking-glass, set upon a locker. “Ye are not at work; is it, then, a saint’s day?” “I am not going unkempt.”