This time, turning somewhat to the left, they crossed the meadows up a gentle slope. But the children stayed behind a little; and the sons of Gulbas, aided by Vitek, and according to the immemorial custom, here thrashed several boys so soundly that there was a great uproar, and the priest was obliged to intervene and quiet them. Farther on, they came to a wide place of pasturage at the parish boundaries, dotted over with little thickets of juniper, growing at the border. This pasture land wound hither and thither, like a green river, with waves of grass, and so full of flowers that even the old cart-ruts abounded in daisies and dandelions. In places, too, there were large trees, so fenced about with brambles that there was no approaching them; and then came wild pear-trees, all in bloom, sung to by myriads of bees, and towering aloft, most beautiful and godlike of shape; one felt ready to fall down and kiss the ground which had brought them forth! And then, the birch-trees! How they arched their lovely trunks, attired in silvery bark, quite over-canopied with green braids and tresses, and reminding you of a young maiden, intensely quivering with pure emotion, who goes to her first Communion! Little by little, they trended uphill, circling Lipka from the north, and along the miller’s fields, lush with rye: first the cross, then the priest, afterwards the girls and younger women, then the old folk straggling by twos and threes abreast, and, last of all, Agata, hobbling and coughing. When they were out on the plain, the hush deepened. The wind had fallen; the banners hung limply down, and the procession lengthened out to the extent of a furlong, the women’s bright dresses set off by the surrounding greenery, and the taper-flames trembling and fluttering like golden butterflies. And, high above, the sky was quite blue, except for a few woolly clouds, white sheep on the immensity of those azure fields, through which the huge hot sun rolled on, bathing the world in heat and splendour. The chants now grew louder, resounding from full throats and hearts with such deafening clamour that the birds flew frightened out of the trees that stood near; and sometimes a partridge rose in alarm from under their very feet, or a leveret went bounding away. “The autumn-sown lands are getting on well,” the priest whispered. “I have seen corn already in the ear there,” said the miller. “Whose is that field, so badly tilled? The furrows are half full of dung!” “Some poor _Komornik’s_ potato-patch: it looks as if ploughed with a cow!” “Probably his Reverence’s farm-hand has ploughed it, then,” the blacksmith put in with quiet malice.