This heat was really a visitation, but the people troubled little about it, plunged as they were in their preparations for the service. The girls appointed to bear the feretories and shrines and pictures in the procession ran like mad from cabin to cabin to try on their robes and comb their hair, while their elders were adorning the altars as fast as they could—at the miller’s, outside the priest’s (instead of at the Voyt’s), and before Boryna’s cabin, where Hanka with her household had been working hard ever since the peep of day. They were also the first to have done the work, and so artistically that everyone admired it even more than the miller’s altar. It was indeed finer. In front of the porch there stood a sort of little chapel, made of interwoven birch-boughs, covered with pieces of woollen cloth, striped in many a hue; whilst inside, on a platform, rose an altar with white napery and fine linen, embellished with tapers and flowers in pots, to which Yuzka had stuck various patterns in gilt paper to adorn them. There hung above the altar a large-sized painting of our Lady, and several smaller ones on either side. To enhance the effect of the whole, they had suspended over the altar a cage containing a blackbird that Nastka had brought. From the very gate a lane had been made of fir-branches, alternating with birch-boughs, planted and neatly tumped with yellow sand; and the sanded path had been sprinkled over with sedges. Yuzka had brought whole armfuls of cornflowers, larkspurs and field vetches, with which she wreathed images, candlesticks, and whatever else could be wreathed, even strewing flowers all over the ground before the altar. The cabin too came in for its share: walls and windows were drowned in verdure, and waving sedges stuck all along the top of the roof. Everybody was hard at work, except Yagna alone, who early in the morning had slipped out of the hut, and was not seen any more that day. So they were the first to be ready, but not before the sun shone well over the village, and the clatter of the carts coming in from the other hamlets began to increase. Very hurriedly they made ready for church. Vitek alone was to remain in the enclosure; for swarms of children came pressing in to admire the altar and whistle to the blackbird. He tried to keep them at a distance with a bough, but it would not do. So he loosed his stork, that came on stealthily, prodding and thrusting at their bare legs with its sharp beak, and made them disperse with screams. They started all together, just as the Mass-bell began to tinkle. Yuzka went in front, dressed all in white, book in hand, and with bows of bright red to her shoes. “What do you think of this, Vitek?” she had asked, spinning on her heel before him. “You’re as fair to see as the whitest goose!” he answered in admiration.