“And where do we _Komorniki_ come in?” he shrieked. “Are we mere cat’s-paws? We all who are not landowners stand up against this agreement. What, shall one have a belly so great he can hardly walk, and another die of starvation? The lands must be meted out equally to all.—Ye are all of you carrion and Squires!—Look at them, those barebacked ones, who yet hold their heads as high as if they sneezed at us all!” He screamed so loud, and with such foul language, that they put him out of doors; but outside the tavern he still continued his invectives and imprecations. They then separated, some to go home, and some to enjoy the dance, for the music had just struck up. Evening was falling now. The sky, all in flames, tinged the orchard tree-tops and the ears of corn with crimson and gold. A soft damp wind had sprung up, and the croaking of frogs and the piping of quails resounded; the grasshoppers’ shrill notes were heard in the fields, mingling with the everlasting rustling of the cornstalks, the rumbling of the carts driving off, and now and then the drunken song of a man on his way home. These noises gradually subsided. The villagers sat outside their huts, enjoying the quiet and the cool of the evening. Boys were bathing near the mill, splashing and bawling; in the enclosures, the lasses were singing country songs. There was next to no one at the Borynas’. Hanka had gone out with the children; Pete had absented himself somewhere, and Yagna had been away since Vespers. Only Yuzka, busied with the evening household cares, was there with the blind _Dziad_. He, sitting in the porch, inhaled the cool breeze and, while mumbling a prayer, lent an attentive ear to the approaches of Vitek’s stork, that was sidling up for a surprise attack on his legs with its beak. “Ah, you villain, a murrain on you!—How hard it pecks!” he grumbled, drawing his feet under him, and waving his long rosary. But the stork only retreated a few paces, and again, with its long stretched-out beak, advanced in another direction. “Oh, I hear you well! You shall not get at me this time.—A clever fowl, though!” he muttered. But just then he heard someone fiddling in the yard; so he drove the stork away with several cuts of his rosary, in order to listen with more pleasure to the sounds. “Yuzka, who is it playing so featly?” “Only Vitek! He has learned to play from Pete; and now he is for ever playing, till one’s ears tingle.—Vitek, have done, and give the colts their clover now!” she called to him. The fiddle was silent. But a thought had struck the _Dziad_ and when Vitek came in, he said to him in a most friendly tone: “Here’s for you. Such good playing is well worth a five-kopek piece.” Vitek was immensely gratified. “Can you play pious tunes as well?” “Whatsoever I hear, I can play.” “Ah, but ‘every fox praises its own tail.’—Now, prithee, play this air.” And he bleated out something in his professional line, shrill, slow, and quavering.