“Look there!” his mother cried; “how that brat has smeared his face!” She pointed to the boy on the britzka. “Yes he has made free with my strawberries. Eat away, eat away!—I met Yagna coming out of the wood with them, and she gave me some.” He coloured bashfully. “Boryna was just telling me he had met you both....” “I did not see him; he must have passed at some distance.” “Child, folk in a village can see things through walls—even things that have not taken place!” She laid stress on the words, looking down on her twinkling knitting-needles. Yanek had apparently not caught her meaning. Seeing a flight of doves sweeping low above the rye, he aimed a stone at one of them, saying merrily: “They are the priest’s: anyone can tell that, so fat they are!” “Be still, Yanek! Someone else might hear you!” she gently rebuked him, though her thoughts already saw him a parish priest, and herself spending her old age by his side, and living the rest of her years in peace and happiness. “And when is Felix coming for the vacation?” “Why, Mother, know ye not? He is in jail.” “Saints of the Lord! In jail! What was the misdeed?—And I always said and foretold he would come to a bad end!—Such a scapegrace!—Had he become a scrivener of low degree—that would have sufficed him—quite; but the miller wanted him to be a doctor, forsooth!... And they were so stuck up, so proud of their darling! Now he is in jail—and a pretty comfort to them!” she said, trembling all over with malevolent satisfaction. “But, Mother, it is not that at all: he is in the Warsaw Citadel.” “In the Citadel? Then” (she lowered her voice) “it is some political misdeed!” Yanek either could not or would not tell her any more, and she went on, in a faltering voice: “My dear child, remember never to have aught to do with any such affairs.” “No! In our seminary, anyone who so much as speaks of them is expelled.” “You see? They would expel you, and you would never be a priest, and I—I should die of shame and sorrow! O God! have mercy upon us!” “My dear mother, have no fear for me.” “And you are aware how hard we work and strive for the bettering of your lot; what trouble we have—so many of us, and our gains always growing less; and how, were it not for the bit of land we have, our priest would drive us to die of starvation. Aye, he now settles matters directly with the peasants, both for weddings and for funerals: who ever heard of such a thing! He says Father takes too much from the peasants—and he becomes their benefactor at other folk’s expense!” “But,” Yanek faltered here, “Father really did take too much!” “What! will ye rise up in judgment on your own father?—Even were this true, for whom is he greedy? For himself? No: for you all; for you and your schooling!” She felt deeply hurt. Yanek was going to ask her forgiveness, but he just then heard a bell tinkle on the other side of the pond, and cried: