Two fresh tapers having been lit at Boryna’s side, a sheet was spread over the body. Agata went on praying, and every now and then putting more juniper-berries on the hot coals. After breakfast, Yagna came from her mother’s, but was so frightened of the dead man that she never went in, and only wandered outside, watching Matthew as he worked at the coffin. He had done hammering now, and was just painting a white cross upon the top, when he saw her at the stable-door, silent and looking upon the black coffin-lid with a great sinking at heart. “Yagna!” he whispered compassionately, “you’re a widow now—a widow!” “Yes, yes, I am!” she returned in a sad subdued voice. He felt much pity for her; so worn, and pale, and unhappy-looking, and like a child that has been ill-used. “’Tis the common lot!” he told her, gravely. “A widow! a widow!” she repeated. Tears welled up to her dark-blue eyes; a deep sigh burst from her bosom. She ran out into the rain and wept there so plentifully that Hanka came to bring her within doors. “Of what use is weeping? We too have much to bear. But to you, forlorn one, it is in truth a still greater blow,” she said kindly. Yagustynka, always the same, here observed: “Weep away! But ere the year be out, I’ll sing you such a new wedding-song as will make you dance like mad.” “Such jests are ill-timed now!” Hanka said reproachfully. “I say true; ’tis no jest! Why, is she not wealthy and lovely and young? She will need a stout stick to keep the men away from her!” Hanka, going out to take the pigs their wash, looked along the road. “What,” she thought with misgiving, “can the matter be? He was to be set free on Saturday: it is Monday now, and there’s no news of him!” But she had no time for brooding. Her assistance was wanted to make the rest of the hay and all the clover just mown into cocks, for the rain never left off, and was falling in torrents. In the evening, the priest came with the organist and the Confraternity, bearing lighted tapers, to lay Boryna in his coffin. Matthew nailed it down, the priest recited some prayers, sprinkled holy water over it, and it was taken to church in procession, Ambrose tolling the funeral bell the while. How empty, how fearfully quiet the hut seemed on their return! Yuzka quite broke down. Hanka said: “He was just like a corpse for so many a day, yet we felt there was a master amongst us!” “But Antek will come,” Yagustynka assured her, “and there will then be another master!” “Would it were soon!” she sighed. But as in this rainy weather there was a great deal of work to do, she dashed her tears away. “Come, good people!” she cried. “Should the greatest man in the world die, he is like a stone in the depths of the sea—never to be fished up again; and the land will not wait, and we must toil and till it.”