The yard was so flooded with the heat, together with the pungent effluvium of the dung, that even the birds in the orchard close by could sing no longer; the hens had lain down half dead under the hedge, and the pigs wallowed squealing in the mud by the well. All at once the _Dziad_ fell a-sneezing furiously: a whiff yet more noisomely offensive had reached him from the cow-byre. “God bless you, _Dziad_!” “That’s no incense-smoke, I wot; and used though I am to the smell, it is stronger than snuff in my nostrils.” “But use makes all things pleasant.” “Fool! don’t you think I ever smell aught but dung?” “I was but repeating what my old grandsire told me when my drill-sergeant gave me slaps in the face.” “Ha, ha, ha!—Did you get used to that, pray?” “I soon had enough of such drilling, and meeting the ruffian one day in a quiet corner alone, I made his face swell like a pumpkin ... and he never slapped mine any more!” “Did you serve long?” “The whole of my five years! I could not purchase my discharge; so I had to—shoulder arms.—At first, ere I knew a thing or two, anyone who would could ill-treat me, and I had to suffer want ... till my comrades taught me to snap up anything I needed ... or get some maidservant to give it me, whom I promised to marry. And what nicknames those Russian soldiers gave me! and how they laughed at my speech and at my manner of prayer!” “Did they dare laugh at that, the plague-spotted heathen?” “Aye, till I punched their ribs for them, one after another, and made them leave off!” “You must be a strong fighter!” “Not especially,” he answered with a boastful smile; “but I could drub any three of them at a time!” “Have you seen warfare?” “Of course. Against the Turks. We thrashed them soundly, we did!” “Pete!” Hanka called out to him; “where’s the wood?” “Where it was,” he muttered inaudibly. “Your mistress is calling you,” the _Dziad_ said. “Let her call! What, am I to wash up the pots for her?” “Are you deaf?” she shouted, running out of the house towards him. “I shall not feed the fire; ’tis no duty of mine!” he shouted back. She began thereupon to rail at him to the best of her ability. He, on his side, railed back at her, nothing loath, and when she presently gave him a harder home-thrust, he planted his pitchfork in the dunk and cried angrily: “Ye have not to do with Yagna now: your screaming will not scare me away.” “But what I will do, you shall see ... and remember!”