They continued the debate a long time, even till the morning light; but in the end it was quite decided that she should be expelled. But few took her part; those who did were shouted down. Matthew alone fearlessly dealt curses around upon them all and, reviling the whole village in the utmost paroxysm of fury, left the place at last, and went to beg Antek to save Yagna. “Do ye know what has been decided?” he asked him at dawn, pale as death and trembling from head to foot. “I know. Law and custom are on their side,” he replied curtly, whilst washing his face at the well. “To hell with such laws! It’s all the work of the organist and his wife.... Shall we put up with such injustice?—In what has she been to blame? All their accusations are mere lies!... Lord! are they to hunt her from our midst, like a mad dog?” “Would you, then, resist the assembly of the people?” “Ye talk as if ye were on their side!” Matthew cried, in a tone of sharp reproach. “I am on no one’s side. She is no more to me than a stone.” “O Antek, rescue her!—Do something, for God’s sake! I shall go mad—mad! Think of it: what can she do? where can she go?... Ah, those villains, those sons of dogs, those wolves!... I will swing my ax, and smite, and spare no one!” “I will not help you in any wise. They have decided: what is one man against them all?—Nothing!” “Aha!—You have a grudge against her!” Matthew suddenly flashed out. “Grudge or no grudge, that concerns none but myself!” Antek replied sternly, and leaned back against the well-cover, looking into vacancy. His passion for Yagna, suppressed but not less active, was now raging within him, together with bitter jealousy: both tossing him to and fro, like a tree that groans in the blast. He looked around him. Matthew was gone. The village seemed a strange place to him—loathsome and blatant exceedingly. And in the very weather of that memorable day, too, there was something odd and abnormal. The huge swollen disk of the sun shone pallid in the sky; the heat was of a sultriness beyond all that had yet been; the sky was clouded with low-hanging hideous-looking vapours; the wind every now and then sprang up in fitful gusts, and the dust rose in thick whorls and spirals. A storm was at hand; far away, there were flashes along the wooded horizon. Now had the fermentation amongst the people risen to the highest pitch. They ran about wildly; brawling was heard in almost every hut; women fought together on the mill-pond banks; the dogs were howling all the time. Scarcely anyone went to work in the fields. The cattle, left at home, lowed plaintively in the byres. Nor was there any Mass on that day, the priest having left the place at daybreak. And every minute the feeling of unrest increased in every mind.