True, she had to grudge herself food and sleep and rest of any kind, toiling incessantly from early dawn till late into the night. For one so timid by nature, continually in the past snubbed and brow-beaten by Antek, and accustomed neither to such work nor to such responsibilities, this position was at times especially hard and intolerable: but the dread of being turned out of the place, together with her hatred for Yagna, gave her the strength to pull through. Whencesoever her energy had come, she remained steadfast at her post; and shortly everyone began to regard her with wonder and respect. “Dear, dear!” would the best housewives of Lipka say to one another; “once we thought she could not say ‘Boo!’ to a goose; and lo, she is as good as an able husbandman!” Ploshkova and others even went the length of asking her advice at times, and willingly gave her their own counsel and help. This she accepted with gratitude, but did not seek society at all, remembering too well how she had been dealt with so short a time ago. Besides, she cared little for gossip, and had no liking for neighbourly chats and bits of scandal bandied round over the fences. No. She had enough with her own troubles, and her neighbours’ shortcomings did not interest her. At this stage of her thoughts, Yagna recurred forcibly to her mind—Yagna, with whom she was waging silent but desperate and stubborn warfare. The thought was like a stab in her breast; it made her start up and hurriedly end her prayer, crossing herself and beating her breast. Returning in no pleasant mood, she was all the more vexed to find everybody asleep in the cottage, and in the outhouses as well. She rated Vitek soundly, routed Pete out of his litter of straw, and scolded Yuzka too, for “lying abed when the sun was a span high!” “If I but take my eyes off them to pray for a moment, I find them all snoozing, each in his corner!” she grumbled, as she lit the fire. Afterwards, taking the children outside, and cutting some bread for each of them, she called Lapa to play with them, while she went in to see after Boryna. On that side of the cottage, all was as still as death; and she slammed the door angrily. Yet she did not wake Yagna; and the old man still lay as she had left him the night before, his ashen face, overgrown with a stubbly beard, showing above the red-striped coverlet; worn, gaunt, impassive as the wood-carven image of a saint. His eyes, wide open and motionless, stared right before him; his head was wrapped up in cloths, and his arms hung limp and lifeless, like broken boughs of a tree. She set his bed in order, shook up the covering about his legs (for the room was close), and gave him some fresh water, which he drank slowly, but made no other motion, lying as still as a felled trunk. Only in his eyes there was a faint glimmer, as that of a river which, between night and dawn, is shadowed forth feebly for the twinkling of an eye.