Farther, at Balcerek’s, there was Mary, held to be (barring Yagna Borynova) the comeliest girl in the village, sowing peas in black and highly manured soil close to the hedgerow. But she wriggled about like a fly caught in resin, her kerchief twisted round her head, and her father’s capote put on over her petticoat to protect it, and trailing on the ground. “No need to hasten so; you have plenty of time!” he said, smiling, as he drew near. “Why, know ye not, ‘If peas be on Holy Tuesday sown, each gallon will give you a bushel when grown’?” she cried in response. “Ere your sowing be ended, those first sown will be out. But, Mary! ye cast the seed too thick; when they come up, they will lie in a tangle on the ground.” And he taught her how to sow as the wind blew; the silly girl had never thought of making the peas drop equally everywhere. “Vavrek Soha had told me you were a handy lass,” he remarked casually, as it were, while retracing his steps along the miry furrow. “Have ye spoken with him?” she asked, stopping in her work, and suddenly out of breath. She had flushed a dark crimson, but was ashamed to repeat her question. Roch’s only answer was a smile; but, as he left her, he said: “At Eastertide I shall tell him with what a will you work.” Again, on the lands of the Ploshka, a couple of little boys were at work on a potato-field hard by the road. One drove, the other meant to plough. But as each of them hardly reached to the mare’s tail, and had next to no strength at all, the plough zigzagged like a tipsy man, and the mare was ever and anon for going back to the stable. At which they both used the whip on her, and also bad language. “We can manage, Roch, we can manage; ’tis only these nasty stones twist the plough awry, and the mare would fain go to the manger,” the elder one blubbered, to excuse himself, when Roch took the handles and traced a straight furrow, teaching him meanwhile how to deal with the mare. “But now,” the boy cried boldly, “we shall have ploughed the whole field ere nightfall!” He peered round suspiciously, to see whether anyone had been witness to Roch’s assistance; and when the old man had gone, he seated himself on the plough, turned away from the wind (as he had seen his father do), and lit a cigarette. Roch went on, looking about him to help where help was required. Silencing brawls, settling disputes, giving good advice, he also came in aid, however hard the work, whenever aid was wanted. Klemba’s wife could not chop up a hard knotty stump—he did it for her; Dominikova required water from the pond—he brought it; and, farther on, children were wayward, and he awed them into obedience. A wise and pious man, and one who knew people as few did, he knew at one glance what to say and how to say it; how to drive away sadness with a merry tale; how to laugh with one, pray with another, and reprove a third with words of grave wisdom or stern warning.