“It is you that are always making mountains of molehills! You quake so, your teeth are well-nigh falling out of your heads; yet all are greedy to hear that something is to hap! Much do I trouble about the gendarmes!” Thereupon Ploshkova, pushing forward her portly figure, began telling them how “something had come over her as soon as she saw those carts....” “Be quiet! Here comes Gregory and the Voyt, running at full speed towards the priest’s house.” Their eyes followed the two moving figures on the farther side of the pond. “Aha! Gregory too is wanted!” They were wrong. Gregory only pushed his brother in, but stayed himself to look at the carts drawn up there, and to question the drivers who were sitting in the porch. Then, in great distress, he ran to Matthew, who was working at Staho’s cabin, and sitting astride on one of the roof-beams, while cutting hollows in it to fix the rafters. “Not gone yet?” he asked, cutting away as before. “No; and the worst is, we cannot tell for whom they have come.” “Some evil thing is certainly at hand,” old Bylitsa stammered. “Perchance they come about our meeting. The District Official threatened us then, and the gendarmes have been to and fro, seeking to find out who it is that eggs on the Lipka folk,” Matthew said, slipping down to the ground. “Then they are likely to have come for me!” Gregory rejoined, suddenly breathless with apprehension. “No, I think they mean to seize Roch!” Staho asserted. “True, they have inquired about him once already: how could I let that slip my memory?” He felt relieved for himself; but at once said, in distress for the other’s fate: “No doubt, if they have come for anyone, ’tis for him!” “Well, but shall we let him be taken?” shouted Matthew. “Him, that is so truly a father to us all!” “Alas! we cannot resist them, it is not to be thought of.” “Let him hide somewhere—and first let us warn him instantly.” “But peradventure,” Staho remarked diffidently, “they may have come on some other errand—the Voyt’s business, for instance.” “He must at all events be warned,” cried Gregory; and, rushing out into the rye, and working around several gardens, he soon reached Boryna’s hut. Antek was sitting in the porch, putting jagged edges to some sickles on a small anvil. On hearing what the matter was, he started up in alarm. “He has only just come in.—Roch!” he cried. “Here, we want you.” “What is it?” the old man asked, putting his head out of the window; but before they had time to speak, in dashed Michael, the organist’s lad, panting very hard. “Know, Antek, that the gendarmes are coming to you now, and are already at the mill-pond!” “For me!” Roch bowed his head with a sigh. “Jesu Maria!” Hanka shrieked from the threshold, and burst into tears. “Oh, be quiet!” Antek whispered; he was thinking very hard. “We must hit upon something.”