“I should never have dreamed of buying any such beautiful things,” Hanka said, still in the melting mood, as she tried on her new shoes. “They are a little tight for me, now I go barefoot; but in winter they will be just the thing.” Roch asked her about the doings in the village. She answered, but in a desultory way, being very busy with the food. In a short time she had set before them a large dish of boiled potatoes, plentifully seasoned with fat bacon, and another one, not a whit smaller, of _barszcz_, in which there swam a huge sausage, looking for all the world like a floating wheel. And they fell to with an excellent appetite. “That’s the food I like,” he cried, merrily; “lots of garlic to give the sausage a taste! After that, a man feels he has something inside him. But there, in jail ... they fed me so—devil take them all!” “Ah! poor dear! how famished you must have been!” “Aye, aye! towards the end I had no taste for anything!” “The boys told us only a starving dog could eat what they gave them: it is so?” “There’s some truth in that; but the worst was staying locked up. In the cold weather it was still bearable; but when the sun shone warm, and I smelt the smell of the land—oh, then, how I raged! I even tried to tear out the window-bars; but they prevented me.” “Is it true,” Hanka asked in a trembling voice, “that they beat folk there?” “No doubt. But then the place is full of such villains, ’twere but justice to flog them daily.—Oh, no one ever dared to lay a finger on me! If anyone had ... well, I’d have made short work of him.” “Yea, in truth! Who on earth could overcome you, you mighty one?” she said, with eyes gloating over him, and attentive to the least signal he should give. They had soon finished their meal, and went out to sleep in the barn, where Hanka had already carried them beds and pillows. “I declare,” Antek said, laughing, “we shall both melt away like dripping in that place!” She closed the great barn-door upon them, and then gave way to her feelings: to hide them, she went and weeded the parsley-bed, every now and then looking around her, while the tears welled up. They were tears of joy, shed—why? Because the sun beat hot upon her shoulders; because the green leaves were fluttering over her; because the birds sang, and fragrance filled her senses; and she felt so happy, so serene, so blissful within her soul!—As if she had just returned from confession—perhaps happier still! “Thou, O Lord Jesus, hast done all this,” she murmured, raising her moist eyes to Heaven, her soul filled with the deepest and most ineffable gratitude for the great boon she had received.