And as the Mass-bell tinkled from the church, each man stood up in the fields to listen to the sounds: those nearest could even catch the faint notes of the organ. Some knelt down to say their morning prayer, even aloud; some uttered a pious ejaculation, in which he found spirit and strength to work; everyone at least crossed himself ... and then fell to work with the utmost energy. Thus did it go on all day: a Divine Service of hard and ceaseless and most fruitful work. Scarcely anyone remained at home. All the doors of all the huts stood wide open; even the children went afield, the aged and the invalids; and even the dogs, breaking loose from the ropes that bound them, darted off to the harvest-making. No one was indolent, no one stood eyeing his neighbours’ crops; they all, bowed over the furrows, and with untiring diligence, worked hard in the sweat of their brows. Dominikova’s fields alone remained unreaped—forgotten, as it were. The corn dropped grain by grain to the ground, the ears withered up with drought: no one went there, and the passers-by averted their heads not to see the desolation. More than one felt compassion, and cast wistful glances at his neighbours; but he would then fall to work again more diligently than before: it was no time for them to stand contemplating ruin and devastation. For harvest was now in full swing: day succeeded day, full of the hardest toil, most joyfully supported. And at last, the weather continuing magnificent, they bound the cut corn into sheaves, setting them up on the fields by clusters of eight, to be brought home to Lipka at their convenience. Now did the ponderous wagons roll along, on every field, through every lane, to every barn in the village. The gathered billows of golden corn flowed out along the ways and in the yards and on to the threshing-floors; a few stalks even floated in the pond, or dangled aloft from the roadside trees, with their yellow bearded stalks; and all the country-side was redolent of the reaped straw and the fresh ripe grain. On not a few threshing-floors the flails were beating already, for the people were in a hurry to get their corn made into bread. Without, on the vast expanse of stubble, multitudes of geese were gleaning the remaining ears, and flocks of sheep and herds of oxen grazed there too. There, too, some fires had been kindled; and all day long the lasses sang and made a joyful noise, that mingled with calls and rumbling of carts, and made the merry sunburnt faces of the villagers shine still brighter.