“If,” she mused, “I was able to hold out till haymaking, or till the harvest begins! Oh, then I could willingly lie down and die, dear Jesus! lie down and die!” She thought her hopes sinful, and wanted to excuse them. But now arose the disquieting thought: who would take her in and let her die in his hut? “I shall,” she said, “look for some good kind-hearted people: and they may be more willing if I promise them a little money. Indeed, no one cares to have trouble and annoyance in his own cottage on account of a stranger.” As to dying at her relations’, the Klembas, she durst not even think of that. “So many children!—No room in the cabin; and the fowls are laying now, and place must be made for them.—And then, it were a disgrace for such landowners to have a beggar, their kinswoman, die under their roof.” All this she was pondering without any bitterness, as she plodded her way on the road along the dike raised to protect the meadows and cabbage-plantations from a flood. The mill-pond shone bright on her left, reflecting the sun’s golden locks in its deep-blue waters. On its banks, overgrown with drooping alders, flocks of geese screamed and flapped their wings; on the still miry roads, troops of merry children ran about and shouted. And Lipka stood on this side and on that of the pond, as it had stood no doubt ever since the world began, buried in its wide-spreading orchards, and in the undergrowths of its enclosures. Slowly Agata trudged on, but with swift glances that took everything in at once. The miller’s wife was sitting on the threshold of her house, amongst a boisterous troop of goslings, yellow as wax, that she was taking care of. Agata greeted her, and went quickly past, well pleased that the dogs which lay basking along the walls had not taken note of her. She crossed the bridge, where the waters began their rush to the mill-wheels, and the road forked out into two branches that embraced the whole village. After an instant’s hesitation, her desire to see everything mastered her, and she turned to the left, making her way a little longer. The forge, which she passed first, was silent and lifeless; against the sooty walls stood the fore part of a cart and several rusty ploughs: but the smith himself was away, and his wife, in smock and petticoat, busy digging in the orchard. Agata went around, stopping before every hut, leaning over the low stone fences, and gazing curiously at all she saw within. Dogs came up and sniffed at her, but seemed to recognize one of the inhabitants, and went back to lie in the sun. Wherever she went, she found a strange stillness and emptiness. “All the men are away ... attending either at some law court or a meeting somewhere,” she finally said to herself, as she entered the church. Mass was over; his Reverence sat in the confessional; some dozen or so of people from distant hamlets were in the pews, at intervals heaving deep sighs, or uttering some words of their prayers aloud.