“I will, Hanka, I will, and see that no hawk come nigh them.” “What are the farm-lads about?” she asked, after some time. “Oh, Pete is ploughing the potato-fields close to the hillock, and Vitek harrowing our field of flax.” “Is that land still wet!” “It is: clogs stick fast; but it will dry speedily, when harrowed.” “I may perchance leave my bed, ere the land can be sown.” “Oh, have a care for yourself just now. Do not fear lest anyone steal your work!” “Have the kine been milked?” “By me! Yagna had set the pails outside the byre, and gone away.” “She runs about Lipka continually, like a dog: a useless woman on whom there is no counting.—Tell Kobusova I will let her have the cabbage-patches. Pete will take her manure, and plough it in; but she must work four days a week for every field. Half to be done when we plant the potatoes, and the other half in harvest-time.” “Kozlova would gladly take the flax-fields on the same terms.” “She would not do: too lazy.—Let her seek elsewhere: last year she wagged her tongue against Father all through the village, saying he had treated her unfairly.” “Please yourself: yours is the land, do as ye will with it.—Ah! Filipka came for potatoes yesterday, while you were lying in.” “To be paid for in cash?” “No, in work. In that hut there is no money: they are starving.” “Let her have a bushel now. If she wants more, she must wait till we have done planting them. I cannot say how much we shall have to spare. Yuzka will go and measure out a bushel for her.—Though Filipka is but a poor worker.” “Whence should she get the strength? Too little food, too little sleep, and every year a baby!” “Hard times! Harvest over the hills and far away, and dearth at our thresholds!” “Thresholds, say ye? Nay, within doors, and choking the life out of us!” “Have you let the sow loose?” “She is lying by the wall.—A splendid farrow, and each one as round as a roll.” Here Bylitsa appeared in the doorway. “I have left the geese among the gooseberry-bushes,” he said.—“Well, who should come to me at Easter but Mr. Yacek, saying: ‘I will live with you, Bylitsa, be your lodger, and pay you well’? I thought he was flouting me, as the gentry are wont to flout the peasant folk; so I replied: ‘Oh, I don’t mind getting a little money, and I have a room to spare.’—He laughed, gave me a packet of snuff (prime Petersburg quality), looked round my place and said: ‘If you can abide here, so can I; and I’ll fix up your hut so that it will soon look like one of our houses’!” “Well, I declare!” said the old woman in amazement. “Such a great man—own brother to the Squire!” “So he made himself a bed of straw beside mine—and there you are! When I went out, he was on the door-step, smoking a cigarette, and throwing some corn to sparrows.” “But what will he have to eat?” “He has some pots with him, and is continually making and drinking tea.”