“Can you not see that all this must come to an end? that you cannot live on any more in this wise?” she cried, more and more pitilessly, though she herself was weeping, and the tears fell under her bandage down her cheeks. “Shall you be held the lowest of the low? Shall all men point their fingers at you now?—Oh, what a shame for my old age, good Lord! Oh, what a shame!” she murmured despairingly. “Ye too, I hear, were no whit better in your youth!” This silenced Dominikova effectually.—Yagna set to ironing some frills for the next day. It was a windy evening, with whistling sounds in the trees. The moon was sailing athwart a sky flecked all over with cloudlets. Away in the village the lasses were singing, while someone scraped a jerky accompaniment on a fiddle. They heard the Voyt’s wife talking as she passed by. “He went to the Police Bureau yesterday; since then, no news of him.” “Yesterday evening,” Matthew’s voice returned, “he went to the District Office; and the Soltys says the head official had sent both for him and for the scrivener.” After they had passed on, the old woman spoke again, but less harshly this time. “Wherefore did you drive Matthew away from us?” “He was displeasing to me; why, therefore, should he sit here? I seek no man, nor do I need any!” “But ’tis time—aye, high time—to provide yourself with a goodman! Folk would then no longer attack you so. Even Matthew—he’s not to be disdained; a clever fellow, and an honest.” For some time, and very earnestly, she held forth on this theme, but Yagna, busy with her own work and full of her own sorrows, made no reply. So at last her mother gave over, and took up her rosary. It was late in the night. All was quiet, save for the tossing trees and clattering mill; the moon was now quite hid behind dense clouds, though their edges were silvery, and a few sheaves of light shot out between them. “Yagna, you must go and confess to-morrow. You’ll feel more at ease, when rid of your sins.” “To what purpose?—No, I’ll not go!” “Not go to confession!” Her mother’s voice was stridulous with horror. “No. Quick to punish, slow to help: that’s what the priest is.” “Hush, lest the Lord God punish you for those wicked words!—And I say to you: Go to confession, do penance, beg God’s forgiveness; do so, and all may yet be well!” “Penance indeed! Is mine slight? And for what wrong that I have done, pray? No doubt, because I love, and because I suffer, I am rewarded thus. For me, the worst that can be has already come to pass!” And she went on bewailing herself in her sullen mood of exasperation. Alas, poor thing! she had no foreboding—no, not the slightest—of the chastisement which was about to overtake her: a chastisement far less foreseen, and far harsher still! For on the next day, which was Sunday, a rumour spread round the village before High Mass—the incredible rumour that the Voyt had been arrested for a deficit in the village accounts!