Along the western horizon the sky looked like a sheet of rusted iron, but a few clouds still glowed above in golden light. When all the evening duties had been done, the people assembled around the dead body. More and more tapers were lit about Boryna’s head; Ambrose snuffed the wicks again and again, and chanted out of a book; and all present joined in the responses, weeping and lamenting one after another. The neighbours came too, but, as it was very close within, stayed outside, droning out the long sorrowful notes of the Litany as they knelt. This continued till late at night, when they retired, leaving only Ambrose and Agata to watch the body till morning. This they did, at first chanting in a loud voice. But when all noise and movement around had ceased, they felt drowsy, and even Lapa, coming in and licking the grease off his master’s boots, failed to wake them up. About midnight, all became extremely dark, not a single star shone. Withal, there was a deep dead stillness, unbroken save by the faint whispering of a tree, or some eerie far-off sound—neither a shout, nor a crash, nor a call—remote and fading away in the distance. No house in Lipka had any light at all now, save Boryna’s, with the pallid illumination of the tapers, and the dead body just visible in the yellow flames, only blurred by the smoke of the perfumes, and seen as in a cloud of bluish fog. But Ambrose and Agata, with their heads pressed against the body, were both sound asleep and snoring loud. The short summer night was soon over, as if hurrying to depart before the first cock-crow. One after another, all the tapers went out except the largest, which still sent up its long waving flame, like a blade of gold. At last the grey mist-clad dawn looked into the room and into Boryna’s face, who seemed somehow to have awaked from his heavy sleep, and to be listening to the first twitterings of the nestling birds, and through discoloured lids eyeing the still remote daybreak. Now the mill-pond sighed, with drowsy undulations; now the forest began to loom out darkly, looking like a range of black earth-hugging clouds, as the fading night grew phosphorescent, and the trees scattered here and there stood out distinct like tufts of swarthy plumes on the brightening sky-line, while the first morning breeze sprang up, playing with the orchard trees and murmuring in the ears of the sleepers outside the huts. Few, however, opened their eyes as yet, being somewhat languid, as is usual after Sunday or a fair. Then came the day, misty before sunrise, but with the lark chanting his matins, the waters bubbling their joyful carol, the corn giving forth its melodious many-sounding voices; and presently with the plaintive bleating of the sheep, the screaming of the geese, human calls resounding, gates creaking, horses neighing, and all the bustle and movement of those rising to their daily work. But everything was still and quiet yet in Boryna’s hut.