Thus one day after another went by without any change. Hanka, along with the rest of the village, was absorbed in haymaking, and it was only on the third day that she stayed at home since morning. “’Tis Saturday: Antek is sure to come!” she thought joyfully, setting the cabin in order to receive him. Noon came and went, and he was not there yet. Hanka ran beyond the church to look up the poplar road. They were carting the hay, hurrying it home, for the weather was about to change. The air was stiflingly sultry, cocks were crowing, hailstorm clouds hanging about in the sky, winds wheeling and whirling. All expected a storm with a great downpour, but there only came down a short though plentiful rain, at once swallowed up by the thirsty soil, and only cooling the air a little. The evening, somewhat less sultry, was redolent of hay and of the sprinkled earth. Mists rolled along the ways; the moon had not risen yet; the dark sky was but scantily studded with stars. Through the orchards, the light of the cabins glimmered like glow-worms, reflected in the pond and multiplied to myriads. Everywhere the people took their supper out of doors. Hard by, the air trembled with the ripplings of a pipe; from the fields came floating the crickets’ feeble ditty, along with the voices of the land-rail and the quail. At Boryna’s, too, they were all outside the hut: the hay being brought home, Hanka had invited them to a first-class supper; and the great dish clinked with the tapping of the spoons in a lively measure. Yagustynka’s rasping tones were often heard, accompanied with shouts of laughter. Every now and then, Hanka would fill the dish again from the pots, while anxiously watching all the time for any least sound on the road; and she frequently slipped out into the enclosure, looking for Antek. There was not the least trace of him; and only once did the shape of Teresa, leaning against the hedge, no doubt waiting for somebody, meet her eyes. Matthew, unable that day to get speech of Yagna, who was then sullen and unpleasant of mood, was beginning to wrangle with Pete out of sheer ill humour, when Andrew came to call his sister, whom her mother wanted to see. The party broke up thereupon; but Matthew lagged behind for some time. Hanka also went out a little after for another vain look into the darkness, when she heard his voice, gruff and cross, wafted from the mill-pond bank. “Why dog me so? I shall not flee you.... Are we not enough on the lips of folk already?”—He added still more cruel words, to which there came in answer a storm of sobs and a flood of tears. But there was nothing in that to interest Hanka, who was awaiting her husband: she cared little then for other folks’ doings. Yagustynka did the evening household work for her, whilst she herself dandled in her arms the baby, that was rather troublesome; carrying it out with her and rocking it, she went to see the patient.