But here, tired, slightly dizzy, and with his throat full of dust, he sat down in the shadow of the birch-trees by Boryna’s Cross. Little Peter had gone to sleep: he laid him down on his capote; and then, wiping away streams of sweat from his brow, he looked out upon the landscape, and fell into a reverie. The first afternoon shadows of the forest were hesitatingly creeping down to the corn. The tree-tops, glowing in the sun, were conversing one with another, while the thickets of hazel and aspen below shook like men sick with an ague. Woodpeckers pecked on incessantly; magpies were shrieking somewhere unseen. And at times a bee-eater would flash athwart the old moss-grown oak-trees—a flying fragment of rainbow! A cool breath was wafted from within the quiet woodland recesses, into which the sun but rarely shot his keen darts; it came, redolent of mushrooms, of resin, of pools simmering in the hot blaze. Suddenly a hawk was seen above the forest, circled over the fields, and, poising itself for an instant, swooped down into the corn. Antek sprang forward to balk it, but too late: a stream of feathers was floating down, and the robber fleeing through the air, while below partridges piped plaintively, and a terrified hare fled at random, its white scut bobbing up and down. “’Twas most featly done! A bold thief!” Antek thought, returning to his seat. “Well, hawks too must get their food somehow. Such is the law of the world!” he reflected, as he covered little Peter with his capote; for there were numberless black wild bees and bumble-bees buzzing around them. He recalled those days of the near past, when he was longing so fiercely, with such insatiable thirst, to be back in his fields once more. “How they tormented me, the villains!” he said with a curse. Then he became quite motionless.—Just in front of him, a few quails, calling to each other, put their heads timorously out of the rye, but popped back at once, on hearing a band of sparrows alight upon a birch-tree, fluttering, bickering, fighting, and flying down into the sand beneath, with a great racket and hubbub ... when suddenly they all were silent, as if rooted to the spot.—The hawk flew past again, so near them that its shadow glided over the field beneath! “Little brawlers! he has struck you dumb pretty quickly!” Antek mused. “’Tis just the same with men. How many need only a threat, and are hushed at once!” Some wagtails came out upon the road, hopping so near that with a sweep of his hand he almost caught one of them. “I but just missed getting one of the silly creatures for the boy.” And now crows came, one after another, flocking out of the forest, pecking at anything they could find. Scenting a man, they began, cautiously and holding their heads awry, to peer about and go round him, hopping ever nearer and nearer, and opening their gruesome beaks.