To approach the fields yet nearer, she left the road for a narrow path that crossed a ditch where the grass grew lush, and plenty of daisies already opened their pink eyelashes to the sun. She well remembered how, in former years, the fields were at that season all dotted over with red petticoats, and echoing to the lasses’ songs and cries; and she knew well that in such weather it was just the time to manure and till and sow the land. What, then, could the matter be? Why, she saw only one single peasant, standing somewhere in the fields and walking along, throwing grain broadcast in a semicircular sweep. “He must be sowing peas, so early in spring.... One of Dominikova’s lads, no doubt,” she said, and added, with all her heart: “May God in His mercy grant you a bountiful harvest, O dear sower!” The path was rugged and uneven, full of fresh molehills and many a puddle. But, absorbed as she was in every bit of land she saw, she paid no heed to these. “This is the priest’s rye-field. How well it grows! I remember, when I started on my wanderings, the farm-servant was ploughing here, and his Reverence sat close by.” Again she crawled on painfully, breathing hard and looking round with tearful eyes. “This is Ploshka’s rye ... but it must have come up late, or rotted somewhat in the ground.” She bent down—no easy task for her!—to stroke the moist blades lovingly, as she would have stroked a child’s head, with tremulous withered fingers. “Ah, here is Boryna’s wheat! A magnificent piece of ground. Of course: is he not the first farmer in Lipka?—A little frost-bitten, though; the winter has been very severe,” she thought, looking out over the flat expanse of fields ploughed last autumn, and the blades sunk deep in the earth and soiled with mire, testifying to the heavy winter snows and floods. “Oh,” she sighed, “the folk here have suffered not a little.” And she shaded her eyes to look at a couple of lads who were coming by from the village. “The organist’s pupil, and one of his sons.... What large baskets! Ah, no doubt they are going to Vola with their annual list for confession. Yes, that is what they are about.” She greeted them as they went by, and would have chatted with them willingly; but they only mumbled a reply, and hurried on, deep in conversation with each other. “And I have known them ever since they could walk!” she said, disappointed and out of sorts. “Ah, well! how should they know a beggar like me?—But Michael has grown up finely, and will surely now be playing the organ for his Reverence.”