It was now broad day. All Lipka was spread out before and beneath her, in a circle round the mill-pond, now dark-blue and glittering like a mirror through the thin veil of whitish haze over it. Along its shores the cottages were crouching on the ground, and seated like goodwives amongst their yet leafless orchard-trees. A little smoke rose above some of the thatches, panes gleamed in the sunshine, and freshly whitewashed walls contrasted strongly with the dark trunks that partly hid them. And now she could make out each of the huts apart. The mill, with its noisy clutter more distinct as she advanced, stood at one end of the village, close to the road she was following, and at the opposite end the church raised its high white front amongst huge trees, its windows and the golden cross on the steeple shining afar, and the red-tiled roof of the priest’s house visible close by. And beyond, to the very sky-line, extended the bluish-grey ring of forest, the wide expanse of cornland, villages at a distance, nestling in their orchards; outjutting crags, winding roadways, lines of slanting trees, sandhills scantily clad with juniper-bushes, and the thin thread of the stream, sparkling as it ran on to the mill-pond, in and out among the huts. Nearer to her lay the ground belonging to Lipka—as it were, long strips of canvas or cloth that variegated the sloping uplands. They ran in sinuous bands, one close to the other, separated only by the winding footpaths between them, thickly planted with spreading pear-trees, and overrun with briers and brambles; or by drab fallows, clear-cut and sharp in the yellow morning light. Patches of land sown in autumn, now beginning to turn green, dark-hued potato-fields of last year’s crop, bits of newly ploughed soil, and waters on the low levels, with a greyish glimmer as of molten glass, completed the picture. Beyond the mill stretched peaty-coloured meadows, on which storks were seen to wade and heard to “klek”; and farther, cabbage plantations, so flooded as yet that only the tops of the furrows emerged from the water like stranded fishes: over these, white-bellied lapwings flew about. At the crossways there stood crucifixes or statues of saints. And above this little world, the hollow wherein the village nestled, hung the hot bright sun, and the lark trilled out its song: a plaintive lowing was heard from the cow-byres; geese screamed; human voices called one to another; while the wind, bearing all these sounds upon its wings, blew with so warm and so gentle a breath that the land seemed plunged in that quiet ecstasy in which new life is conceived. Yet there were not many workers to be seen in the fields. Only a few women, close to the village, were scattering dung about, and stray whiffs of its sharp pungent smell came to her nostrils. “The lazy fellows! What can they be about on such a day as this, when the land is simply begging to be tilled?... Why are so few at work?” she muttered, in no good humour.