They were sleeping, overcome by the grief that had wrung their hearts so sorely. In came the wind through open windows and doors, whistling and blowing the old man’s hair about, and tossing the flame of the last taper in every direction. And he lay still as a stone, no longer ready to rush to work himself, nor to urge others to toil: deaf to every call how for evermore! The wind was rising higher, streaming through the orchard with great force, making the trees shake and rustle and sway and toss, and seem peeping in through the windows at Boryna’s ashen face. So did the tall slender hollyhocks, bending and bowing at the windows, not unlike red-cheeked country lasses. Now and then a bee from the Manor hives looked in, or a butterfly, glancing in the light; a swallow would dart in and out with a hesitating twitter; and flies and cockchafers, and every kind of living creatures came likewise: so that the room was filled with a quiet buzz and drone and whirring hum—the voices of all these things, repeating: “Dead—dead—he is dead!” The sun rose—a huge red-hot globe, stilling all those voices; and then it suddenly veiled its glorious all-powerful and life-giving face, now hidden behind dense-volumed vapours. The world grew grey; in a minute it began to rain abundantly in warm tiny drops, and soon their fall was heard through every field and orchard, pattering continually. The roads cooled and exhaled the peculiar smell of rain; the birds sang loud and lustily to welcome it; the world was bathed in its greyish tremulous spray; and the thirsty cornfields, and the shrivelling leaves, and the trees, and the rills with their dry parched throats, and the baked clods of earth—all drank deep and heartily, uttering, as it were, a silent thanksgiving. “Thanks, Brother Rain! Thanks, Sister Cloud! We all thank you!” Hanka, who slept by the open window, was waked first by the rain driving in her face, and ran at once to the stable. “Up, Pete! the rain has come—Run and heap the clover in cocks—quick, or it will mowburn and rot!—And you, Vitek, lazy boy! drive our kine afield.—All the other folk’s kine are out by now.”—As she spoke, she let the geese out of the fowl-house, and they hastened to splash joyfully in the pools of water. While she was thus engaged, the smith came, and they settled together what would have to be purchased in town for the funeral feast next day. He took the money; but on starting in his britzka, he called her and whispered: “Hanka, let me have one-half, and I’ll never breathe a word about your robbing the old man!” She flushed red as a beetroot, and cried out in a passion: “Say what ye will, and to the whole world!—Look at that man! He thinks that all are like himself!” He glared at her, pulled at his moustache, and drove off. Hanka was very busy indeed, and her voice was soon heard giving orders everywhere.