It was long before she could speak at all; but, indeed, how could any speech ever express what she felt? She would have knelt to him, kissed the dust at his feet; and when a word or two burst from her lips, they were but like flowers falling before him as an offering, fragrant with happiness, bedewed with her heart’s blood; and these her faithful eyes, brimming over with illimitable love, would lay down at his feet, with the fidelity of a dog that lives only in his master’s will and favour. “You do look poorly, dearest Hanka!” he said, stroking her face with the tenderest affection. “No wonder, having suffered so much and waited so long!” “Poor woman!” Roch here observed; “she has been worked sadly beyond her strength.” “Ah! and ye too are here, Roch! How could I forget you so?” And she welcomed him, and kissed his hands, while he said, with a smile: “Very easily!—Well, I wished to bring you your goodman home; and now here he is!” “Aye, here he is!” she cried, standing up before Antek and eyeing him in admiration. For he was so much whiter now—so much more refined in his strength—so beautiful, so lordly—as if he were someone else! She looked at him in bewilderment. “Have I changed in aught, that your eyes examine me so?” “No, not changed ... and yet somehow not the same at all!” “Oh, when I set to field-work again, I shall soon be once more just as I was!” And now, making a dart into the hut, she came out, bearing her youngest-born. “You see him for the first time, Antek!” she cried, as she lifted up the boy, roaring lustily. “Just look: he is as like you as two peas.” “A fine youngster!” He wrapped him up in the skirt of his capote, and rocked him to and fro. “I have given him the name of Roch!—Here, Peter, go to Father,” and she pushed forward the other boy, who clambered on to Antek’s knee, prattling childishly the while. Antek caressed him as tenderly as the other. “Dear little things! darling mites!—How Peter has grown!—And he talks a little already....” “Oh, and he takes such notice, and he’s so clever! Can he but get hold of a whip, he wants at once to crack it at the geese!” She came kneeling down beside them. “Peter! Come! Try to say ‘Dad’!” He indeed said something dimly resembling the word, and continued cooing to himself, and pulling his father’s hair. “Yuzka,” Antek said, “why do you eye me askant so? Come hither.” “But I dare not,” she said. “Come to me, silly one, come to me!” And he folded her in a kind brotherly embrace. “And now you will obey me in all things, even as you did once obey Father. Fear not: I shall never be harsh to you, and from me you shall suffer no wrong.” The girl burst into a flood of tears, remembering her lost father and her brother who was drowned.