"Before I left her, I asked her whether she could not slip away the following evening. She answered that she could, because in the evening she always gathered the linen, which was being bleached upon the meadow, for fear that some one might steal it, and that besides, in summer time she did not sleep in the cabin with her parents, but on the hay in the barn. After that we met every day. I had to conceal myself from the night watch, so I slunk out of the window into the garden, though this was an unnecessary precaution, for the watch slept so soundly that one time I carried off the trumpet and staff belonging to one of them. It was amusing also that, seeing Hanka only in the night time, I did not know how she really looked; though in the moonlight she appeared to me to be pretty." "And in church?" "Our collator's pew is near the altar, while the girls knelt in the rear. There are so many of the same red and yellow shawls, studded with so many flowers, that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. At times it seemed to me that I saw her in the distance, but I could not see her perfectly. The vacation soon ended, and when I returned the following season the Skibas were gone." "Did you bid her farewell?" "I admit that I did not. I preferred to avoid that." "And did you ever long for her?" "Yes. In Warsaw I longed for her intensely, and during the first month I was deeply in love with her. After my return to Jastrzeb, when I again saw the mill the feeling revived, but at the same time I was content that everything should drop, as it were, into the water and that Mother should not know anything about it." Conversing in this manner, they turned from the side road to the shady walk leading to the manor-house, whose low lights, from a distance of about a verst, at times glistened through the boughs of the linden, and then again hid themselves, screened by the thick foliage. The night was starry and fair. It was, however, quite dark, for the moon had not yet risen and the copper glow upon the eastern sky announced its near approach. There was not the slightest breath of air. The great nocturnal stillness was broken by the barks of dogs, barely audible, from the distant slumbering village. Involuntarily, Gronski and Ladislaus began to speak in lower tones. However, everything was not asleep, for a few hundred paces from the walk, on the meadow near the river, firelights were intermittingly flashing. "Those are peasants pasturing the horses and catching crawfish by the lights of the resinous wood," said Krzycki. "I even hear one of them riding away." And in fact at that moment they heard on the meadows the clatter of the horse's hoofs, deadened by the grass, and immediately afterwards the loud voice of a herdsman resounded, who, amidst the nocturnal quiet, shouted in a drawling tone: "Wojtek--Bring with you some more fagots, for these are not sufficient."