“Harm?—When Poland was free, they cared no whit for the people, only to drive them to work with a whip, and oppress them, while they themselves made merry, and danced the country to ruin: so that we now must build it all over, from the very foundations.” The Squire was a hot-headed man, so he lost his temper: “You insolent peasant! Let alone the nobles and their doings—care rather to pitchfork your dung—you had better! And keep your tongue between your teeth, and well inside, or there be those that will cut it out for you!” And, slashing his mare, he went off down the road at a swift gallop. Antek was not less offended and indignant. “That race of hounds!” he muttered angrily. “Great gentlemen, forsooth! Blood of a dog! So long as he stood in need of the peasants, he was hail-fellow-well-met with them all! The vermin—himself not worth a roast louse!” Infuriated, he strode along, crushing the toadstools on his path in his rage. On leaving the wood for the poplar road, he heard a couple of voices that seemed familiar to him, and, peering forward, perceived a britzka covered with dust in the shade of some birches at the edge of the wood, and Yanek, the organist’s son, standing with Yagna a few paces off. He rubbed his eyes, quite sure they must be in fault. They were not. The couple, not twenty paces from him, stood gazing one at the other, with faces wonderfully radiant. Much surprised, he strained his ears to catch what they were saying; but he could only just hear that they spoke aloud. She had come out of the forest, and met him driving to the village: a chance meeting, he thought at first. But at that moment he was swept by a wave of suspicion, and a rankling sense of bitterness got hold of him. “No! It cannot be but they have met by agreement.” Yet once more, scanning the innocent features of the young man, and seeing the saintly serenity that lighted up his face, Antek grew calmer, though he was still unable to explain why Yagna had dressed so carefully to go to the forest, why her azure eyes flashed so brightly, why her crimson lips trembled so, or why she was so visibly flooded with joy. He took note of her, his eyes gleaming like a hungry wolf’s, as she, with swelling bosom, bent forward to offer Yanek a small basket of bark, out of which he took strawberries, eating some, and putting some in her mouth. “... He is almost a priest, and he wants to play like a baby!” He whispered the words in a tone of pity, and slipped away quickly home, for the sun told him the afternoon meal was due. “That ulcer of mine” (he was alluding to Yagna) “hurts me, but only when I happen to touch it!... Oh, how greedily her eyes were fixed on the lad! As if she would have devoured him!—Well, let her! Let her!” But, do what he would, his “ulcer” gave him excruciating pain.