Presently the priest, from the high altar, intoned the grand “Resurrection chant”; the organ took it up with a roar and boomed sonorously; all the bells rang out and pealed aloud. And then his Reverence, bearing the Most Holy Sacrament, surrounded with a thin blue cloud of incense smoke and the tumultuous din in the belfry, came down towards the people. The chant was continued, bursting forth from every throat; the waves of the crowd tossed and rolled, a fiery blast of enthusiasm dried every tear and lifted every soul to Heaven. So all together, like a living and moving human grove, swaying hither and thither as they sang the hymn in grand unison, went forward in procession, following the priest holding the Monstrance aloft in front of him, as a golden sun that burned above their heads, with chants sounding on all sides and bright tapers all around, scarce visible through the smoke shot forth from the censers: the object of the gaze of every eye, of the love of every heart! With slow and measured steps did the procession wend along the nave and thread the aisles, in a close-packed, surging, vociferously sonorous crowd. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The noise was deafening; the very pillars and arches thrilled to the chant. Hearts and throats burst forth with one accord; and those glowing voices, instinct with mystic fire, flew up to the vault like flame-birds, and sailed out afar into the night, seeking the sun away in those regions to which at such times the soul of man mounts upon the wings of rapture. It was close on midnight when the service ended and the congregation began to break up. Hanka lingered behind. She had been praying ecstatically; for the priest’s words had filled her with confidence, and the service itself, together with the memory of what she had that very day achieved, gave her such intense joy that she desired to lay it all at the feet of Jesus Risen. But Ambrose at last came jingling his keys and signifying to her that she must now leave the church. As she went out, even that passion of fear for Antek which lived within her heart and was wont to start up on the slightest occasion, had as she thought suddenly died out of her. She saw at a distance the rest of her household plodding home. The carts were rolling along in an unbroken procession, and the foot-passengers had to go in groups by the side of the road, almost invisible now that the moon had set and darkness reigned. In the warm quiet night, damp with abundant dew, the breeze blowing athwart the fields was laden with the raw moist odour of the earth; and from the roads there came the honey-sweet fragrance of budding poplars and birches. Folk swarmed along through the shadows; where the gloom was less pitch-black, a few heads appeared, dimly visible. Steps and voices resounded on every side; angry dogs barked, rushing along behind the palings; and in hut and cabin, lights began to gleam.