Returning to the porch, and kneeling down with difficulty (for she expected to be confined in a week or so), she began her morning prayer, with drowsy eyes wandering over the landscape. The day, laden with white fire, was coming apace, and the ruddy glow of dawn melting away into a golden expanse in the East, like the rich silk canopy over the Monstrance, when the Monstrance is not yet in sight. There had been a slight frost overnight; hedges, roofs, cottages shone with white radiance, and the trees had the air of so many fleecy clouds. The village was still sleeping in the haze that crept along the ground; but a few cabins nearer the road now began to show their snowy walls. The mill went on uninterruptedly; the river babbled and bubbled low, audible but unseen. Cocks were noisy and many birds chirped in the orchards, as if saying their morning prayers together, when Hanka went out again to look over all the place and wake the sleepers. She first opened the half-door to the sty. A large porker struggled to get up, but was so fat, it rolled back upon its substantial hind quarters, and only turned its snout towards her, grunting, as she inspected the trough and put in some fresh food. “Its hams are so clad with fat, it can hardly rise. Truly, the fat is at least four inches thick!” And she felt its sides with delight. Entering the poultry-house, she then, to attract the fowls, threw some of the pig’s food she had brought with her. Down they came in a hurry from their roosting-place, with the cocks crowing lustily. She drove away the ganders, which attacked them, and carefully examined the eggs, one by one, holding them up to the light. “They will be hatched out in an hour!” she said, for she could just make out a faint pecking sound within. Just then Lapa, indifferent to the ganders hissing round him, came out of his kennel, drowsily and yawning audibly. At her sight, with a bark and a wag of his tail, he came to her through the crowd of hens; the feathers flew about. He leaped up at her, put his paws on her breast, and licked her hands, she patting his head the while. “Ah, this dumb creature has more feeling than many a man!... Now, Pete! Time to rise!” she cried, beating on the stable-door, until she heard a grumbling and the sound of a bolt shot back; thereupon she opened the cow-byre door, where the kine were lying in a row before their mangers. “What, Vitek! Sleeping so hard, and so late? Up, young imp!” The boy awoke, rose from his straw bed, and began to draw his breeches on, though murmuring; for he was afraid of her. “Give the kine some hay to eat, before I milk them; and then come at once and peel potatoes. But not a handful to Lysula, look you!” she added sternly: Lysula was Yagna’s property. “Let her mistress feed her!” “Oh, she does; and so well that the poor beast is bellowing for food, and eats the straw that’s under her!” “She may starve, for aught I care: ’tis no loss of mine!” she said, with fierce animosity.