The room was close; and, besides, that waxen face with its changeless smile looked so ghastly that he must needs cross himself and go out speedily. On the door-step, he met Yagna and her mother entering. She stopped on seeing him, but he passed her by without a word, not even the usual “Praised be Jesus Christ!” It was only on nearing the fence that he inadvertently turned round. She was still standing where he had passed her, gazing mournfully after him. Going home, he would take no breakfast, pretexting a headache. “Go out for a walk; it may pass away,” his mother advised. “Mother! where am I to go? Ye will directly fancy ... who knows what?” “Yanek, how can you speak so?” “Why, Mother, have you not locked me up in our house? Can I go out, if I must not speak to people?” His nerves were overstrung, and he made his mother suffer in consequence.... It all ended, however, in her bandaging his head with a compress dipped in vinegar, and making him lie down in a darkened room. She drove the children out of the yard, and watched over her boy like a hen over her chicken till he had slept well and eaten a good meal. “And now go for a walk; and go by the poplar road, where ’tis cooler because of the shade.” He did not reply, but, seeing that she carefully noted the way he took, chose the opposite direction on purpose. He strayed about the village, looked in at the forge and the hammers as they smote with deafening din on the anvil; he peeped into the mill, entered garden after garden, and went past the flax-fields and wherever the crimson gleam of a woman’s dress was to be seen. Then he sat and talked with Mr. Yacek, tending Veronka’s cows by a field-path, went on to Simon’s cottage in Podlesie, where they refreshed him with some milk, and came back late in the afternoon, without having seen Yagna anywhere. It was only the next day, at Agata’s funeral, that he met her; her eyes were fixed upon him during all the service. The letters of his book danced before his eyes, and he mistook his Responses. As the body was on its way to the churchyard, she walked almost at his side, utterly indifferent to the fierce glances and loud murmurs of his mother; she felt herself melting in his presence like snow in the spring sunshine! When the coffin was lowered into the grave and the customary lamentations broke forth, his ear caught the sound of her wailing; but he knew well that those sobs were not for Agata, and that they flowed from the fullness of a sorely pained and wounded heart. “I must—I must have speech with her!” His mind was made up on this point on returning from the funeral, but he could not get free at once. Many people from the other hamlets, and even some from neighbouring parishes, had come to Lipka about noon, in order to join in the pilgrimage.