“Thirty-two acres. Also pastures. And a bit of forest. And the outhouses, and the live stock!” She sighed and cast a look of affection on the broad acres before her. “If we could but pay them off, and keep all the land together!—And be just what his father has been!” Pride and ambition filled her heart; she gazed sunwards, smiled fearlessly, and went on telling her beads, her bosom swelling with agreeable hopes. “No, I will not give up even half the land. Half the cabin is mine, too. Nor shall the others get a single one of my milch-kine!” She went on very long in this way, saying her prayers, flinging tearful glances over those lands, clad with sunshine, as if it were a tissue of gold, where the rye, in its growing luxuriance, waved its rusty-red drooping ears; where the darker barley-patches stood shining in the light, glossy and shimmering; where the bright green oats, thickly sprinkled with yellow-flowering weeds, stirred and quivered in the parching heat; where over the blossoming clover that lay spread out on the hill-slope, like a blood-red kerchief, a great bird was hovering, balanced on its outstretched wings, and where the broad beans stood, with their thousands of snowy flowers, keeping watch and ward over the young potato-plants, and a few plots of flax in the hollows gleamed blue with delicate flowers—childlike eyes that seemed blinking in the glare. All was so wondrously beautiful! The sun grew hotter and hotter meanwhile; and the warm breeze, laden with the scents of the blossoms that glowed in countless numbers, breathed from the fields with delicious life-giving might, dilating the souls of men. “O native soil, O holy soil, most holy!” she said, bending down to kiss it. She heard the church-bells tinkling, twittering in the air. “O my dear Jesus! all’s for Thee—yea, all things in the world!” she murmured fervently, and again betook herself to prayer. But close to her she heard a rustling noise, and looked around her cautiously. Beneath the cherry-trees, leaning against the trellised fence, Yagna stood, absorbed in unpleasant thought. “What, never one moment of peace!” Hanka complained; for, at the sight of her, sharp memories arose—sharp as stinging nettles. “Yes, there’s the donation made to her. ’Tis a fact! Aye, six whole acres! Oh, that thief!” She turned her back upon her, but could not take up her prayers again. Like hounds that not only barked but bit deep, the wrongs and outrages of former days came back and beset her. Noon had passed; the shrunken shadows were beginning to creep out once more from under the trees and the houses. In the corn which bent slightly towards the sunbeams, the grasshoppers played their faint shrill music, a beetle hummed by at intervals, or a quail piped. And the weather was all the time growing more and more intolerably hot.