Chapter 11

Within half an hour the priest's round ponies stood at Slimak's gate. The priest walked towards the stable with a lantern in one hand and a basket in the other, pushed open the door with his foot, and saw Slimakowa's body. Further away, on the litter, sat the peasant, shading his eyes from the light.

'Who is that?' he asked.

'It is I, your priest.'

Slimak sprang to his feet, with deep astonishment on his face. He advanced with unsteady steps to the threshold, and gazed at the priest with open mouth.

'What have you come for, your Reverence?'

'I have come to bring you the divine blessing. Put on your sheepskin, it is cold here. Have something to eat.' He unpacked the basket.

Slimak stared, touched the priest's sleeve, and suddenly fell sobbing at his feet.

'I am wretched, your Reverence...I am wretched...wretched!'

'Benedicat te omnipotens Deus!' Instead of making the sign of the cross, the priest put his arm round the peasant and drew him on to the threshold.

'Calm yourself, brother, all will be well. God does not forsake His children.'

He kissed him and wiped his tears. With almost a howl the peasant threw himself at his feet.

'Now I don't mind if I die, or if I go to hell for my sins! I've had this consolation that your Reverence has taken pity on me. If I were to go to the Holy City on my knees, it would not be enough to repay you for your kindness.'

He touched the ground at the priest's feet as though it were the altar. The priest had to use much persuasion before he put on his sheepskin and consented to touch food.

'Take a good pull,' he said, pouring out the mead.

'I dare not, your Reverence.'

'Well, then I will drink to you.' He touched the glass with his lips.

The peasant took the glass with trembling hands and drank kneeling, swallowing with difficulty.

'Don't you like it?'

'Like it? vodka is nothing compared to this!' Slimak's voice sounded natural again. 'Isn't it just full of spice!' he added, and revived rapidly.

'Now tell me all about it,' began the priest: 'I remember you as a prosperous gospodarz.'

'It would be a long story to tell your Reverence. One of my sons was drowned, the other is in jail; my wife is dead, my horses were stolen, my house burnt down. It all began with the squire's selling the village, and with the railway and the Germans coming here. Then Josel set everyone against me, because I had been selling fowls and other things to the surveyors; even now he is doing his best to...'

'But why does everyone go to Josel for advice?' interrupted the priest.

'To whom is one to go, begging your Reverence's pardon? We peasants are ignorant people. The Jews know about everything, and sometimes they give good advice.'

The priest winced. The peasant continued excitedly:

'There were no wages coming in from the manor, and the Germans took the two acres I had rented from the squire.'

'But let me see,' said the priest, 'wasn't it you to whom the squire offered those two acres at a great deal less than they were worth?'

'Certainly it was me!'

'Why didn't you take the offer? I suppose you did not trust him?'

'How can one trust them when one does not know what they are talking among themselves; they jabber like Jews, and when they talked to me they were poking fun at me. Besides, there was some talk of free distribution of land.'

'And you believed that?'

'Why should I not believe it? A man likes to believe what is to his advantage. The Jews knew it wasn't true, but they won't tell.'

'Why didn't you apply for work at the railway?'

'I did, but the Germans kept me out.'

'Why couldn't you have come to me? the chief engineer was living at my house all the time,' said the priest, getting angry.

'I beg your Reverence's pardon; I couldn't have known that, and I shouldn't have dared to apply to your Reverence.'

'Hm! And the Germans annoyed you?'

'Oh dear, oh dear! haven't they been pestering me to sell them my land all along, and when the fire came I gave way....'

'And you sold them the land?'

'God and my dead wife saved me from doing that. She got up from her deathbed and laid a curse upon me if I should sell the land. I would rather die than sell it, but all the same,' he hung his head, 'the Germans will pay me out.'

'I don't think they can do you much harm.'

'If the Germans leave,' continued the peasant, 'I shall be up against old Gryb, and he will do me as much harm as the Germans, or more.'

'I am a good shepherd!' the priest reflected bitterly. 'My sheep are fighting each other like wolves, go to the Jews for advice, are persecuted by the Germans, and I am going to entertainments!'

He got up. 'Stay here, my brother,' he said, 'I will go to the village.'

Slimak kissed his feet and accompanied him to the sledge.

'Drive across to the village,' he directed his coachman.

'To the village?' The coachman's face, which was so chubby that it looked as if it had been stung by bees, was comic in its astonishment:

'I thought we were going...'

'Drive where I tell you!'

Slimak leant on the fence, as in happier days.

'How could he have known about me?' he reflected. 'Is a priest like God who knows everything? They would not have brought him word from the village. It must have been good old Jonah. But now they will not dare to look askance at me, because his Reverence himself has come to see me. If he could only take the sin of my sending Maciek and the child to their death from me, I shouldn't be afraid of anything.'

Presently the priest returned.

'Are you there, Slimak?' he called out. 'Gryb will come to you to-morrow. Make it up with him and don't quarrel any more. I have sent to town for a coffin and am arranging for the funeral.'

'Oh Redeemer!' sighed Slimak.

'Now, Pawel! drive on as fast as the horses will go,' cried the priest. He pulled out his repeater watch: it was a quarter to ten.

'I shall be late,' he murmured, 'but not too late for everything; there will be time for some fun yet.'

As soon as the sledge had melted into the darkness, and silence again brooded over his home, an irresistible desire for sleep seized Slimak. He dragged himself to the stable, but he hesitated. He did not wish to lie down once more by the side of his dead wife, and went into the cowshed. Uneasy dreams pursued him; he dreamt that his dead wife was trying to force herself into the cowshed. He got up and looked into the stable. Slimakowa was lying there peacefully; two faint beams of light were reflected from the eyes which had not yet been closed.

A sledge stopped at the gate and Gryb came into the yard; his grey head shook and his yellowish eyes moved uneasily. He was followed by his man, who was carrying a large basket.

'I am to blame,' he cried, striking his chest, 'are you still angry with me?'

'God give you all that you desire,' said Slimak, bowing low, 'you are coming to me in my time of trouble.'

This humility pleased the old peasant; he grasped Slimak's hand and said in a more natural voice: 'I tell you, I am to blame, for his Reverence told me to say that. Therefore I am the first to make it up with you, although I am the elder. But I must say, neighbour, you did annoy me very much. However, I will not reproach you.'

'Forgive me the wrong I have done,' said Slimak, bending towards his shoulder, 'but to tell you the truth, I cannot remember ever having wronged you personally.'

'I won't mince matters, Slimak. You dealt with those railway people without consulting me.'

'Look at what I have earned by my trading,' said Slimak, pointing to his burnt homestead.

'Well, God has punished you heavily, and that is why I say: I am to blame. But when you came to church and your wife--God rest her eternally--bought herself a silk kerchief, you ought to have treated me to at least a pint of vodka, instead of speaking impertinently to me.'

'It's true, I boasted too early.'

'And then you made friends with the Germans and prayed with them.'

'I only took off my cap. Their God is the same as ours.'

Gryb shook his clenched fist in his face.

'What! their God is the same as ours? I tell you, he must be a different God, or why should they jabber to him in German? But never mind,' he changed his tone, 'all that's past and gone. You deserve well of us, because you did not let the Germans have your land. Hamer has already offered me his farm for midsummer.'

'Is that so?'

'Of course it is so. The scoundrels threatened to drive us all away, and they have smashed themselves against a small gospodarz of ten acres. You deserve God's blessing and our friendship for that. God rest your dead wife eternally! Many a time has she set you against me! I'll bear her no grudge on that account, however. And here, you see, all of us in the village are sending you some victuals.'

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Grochowski.

'I wouldn't believe Jonah, when he came to tell me all this,' he said, 'and you here, Gryb, too? Where is the defunct?'

They approached to the stable and knelt down in the snow. Only the murmuring of their prayers and Slimak's sobs were audible for a while. Then the men got up and praised the dead woman's virtues.

'I am bringing you a bird,' then said Grochowski, turning to Gryb; 'he is slightly wounded.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's your Jasiek. He attempted to steal my horses last night, and I treated him to a little lead.'

'Where is he?'

'In the sledge outside.'

Gryb ran off at a heavy trot. Blows and cries were heard, then the old man reappeared, dragging his son by the hair. The strong young fellow was crying like a child. He looked dishevelled and his clothes were torn; a bloodstained cloth was tied round his hand.

'Did you steal the Soltys' horses?' shouted his father.

'How should I not have stolen them? I did steal them!'

'Not quite,' said Grochowski, 'but he did steal Slimak's.'

'What?' cried Gryb, and began to lay on to his son again.

'I did, father. Leave off!' wailed Jasiek.

'My God, how did this come about?' asked the old man.

'That's simple enough,' sneered Grochowski, 'he found others as bad as himself, and they robbed the whole neighbourhood, till I winged him.'

'What do you propose to do now?' asked old Gryb between his blows.

'I'll mend my ways.'...'I'll marry Orzchewski's daughter,' wailed Jasiek.

'Perhaps this is not quite the moment for that,' said Grochowski, 'first you will go to prison.'

'You don't mean to charge him?' asked his father.

'I should prefer not to charge him, but the whole neighbourhood is indignant about the robberies. However, as he did not do me personally any harm, I am not bound to charge him.'

'What will you take?'

'Not a kopek less than a hundred and fifty roubles.'

'In that case, let him go to prison.'

'A hundred and fifty to me, and eighty to Slimak for the horses.'

Gryb took to his fists again.

'Who put you up to this?'

'Leave off!' cried Jasiek; 'it was Josel.'

'And why did you do as he told you?'

'Because I owe him a hundred roubles.'

'Oh Lord!' groaned Gryb, tearing his hair.

'Well, that's nothing to tear your hair about,' said Grochowski. 'Come; three hundred and thirty roubles between Slimak, Josel, and me; what is that to you?'

'I won't pay it.'

'All right! In that case he will go to prison. Come along.' He took the youth by the arm.

'Dad, have pity, I am your only son!'

The old man looked helplessly at the peasants in turn.

'Are you going to ruin my life for a paltry sum?'

'Wait...wait,' cried Gryb, seeing that the Soltys was in earnest. He took Slimak aside.

'Neighbour, if there is to be peace between us,' he said, 'I'll tell you what you will have to do.'

'What?'

'You'll have to marry my sister. You are a widower, she is a widow. You have ten acres, she has fifteen. I shall take her land, because it is close to mine, and give you fifteen acres of Hamer's land. You will have a gospodarstwo of twenty-five acres all in one piece.'

Slimak reflected for a while.

'I think,' he said at last,' Gawdrina's land is better than Hamer's.'

'All right! You shall have a bit more.'

Slimak scratched his head. 'Well, I don't know,' he said.

'It's agreed, then,' said Gryb, 'and now I'll tell you what you will have to do in return. You will pay a hundred and fifty roubles to Grochowski and a hundred to Josel.'

Slimak demurred.

'I haven't buried my wife yet.'

The old man's temper was rising.

'Rubbish! don't be a fool! How can a gospodarz get along without a wife? Yours is dead and gone, and if she could speak, she would say:

"Marry, Josef, and don't turn up your nose at a benefactor like Gryb."'

'What are you quarrelling about?' cried Grochowski.

'Look here, I am offering him my sister and fifteen acres of land, four cows and a pair of horses, to say nothing of the household property, and he can't make up his mind,' said Gryb, with awry face.

'Why, that's certainly worth while,' said Grochowski, 'and not a bad wife!'

'Aye, a good, hefty woman,' cried Gryb.

'You'll be quite a gentleman, Slimak,' added Grochowski.

Slimak sighed. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'that Jagna did not live to see this.'

The agreement was carried out, and before Holy Week both Slimak and Gryb's son were married. By the autumn Slimak's new gospodarstwo was finished, and an addition to his family expected. His second wife not unfrequently reminded him that he had been a beggar and owed all his good fortune to her. At such times he would slip out of the house, lie under the lonely pine and meditate, recalling the strange struggle, when the Germans had lost their land and he his nearest and dearest.

When everybody else had forgotten Slimakowa, Stasiek, Maciek, and the child, he often remembered them, and also the dog Burek and the cow doomed to the butcher's knife for want of fodder.

Silly Zoska died in prison, old Sobieska at the inn. The others with whom my story is concerned, not excepting old Jonah, are alive and well.

A PINCH OF SALT

BY

ADAM SZYMANSKI

It was in the fourth year of my exile to the metropolis of the Siberian frosts, a few days before Christmas, when one of our comrades and fellow-sufferers, a former student at the university of Kiev, who hailed from Little-Russia, called in to give us some interesting news. One of his intimate friends--also an ex-student and fellow-sufferer--was to pass through our town on his way back from a far-distant Yakut aul,[1] where he had lived for three years; he was due to arrive on Christmas Eve.

[Footnote 1: _Aul: a hamlet_.]

We had repeatedly met people who knew the life in the nearer Yakut settlements; now and then we had seen temporary or permanent inhabitants of the so-called Yakut 'towns' of Vjerchojansk, Vihijsk, and Kalymsk. But the nearer auls and towns were populous centres of human life in comparison to those far-off deserted and desolate places; they gave one no conception of what the latter might be like. Certainly the fact that the worst criminals, when they were sent to those regions, preferred to return to hard labour rather than live in liberty there, gave us an illustration of the charms of that life, yet it told us nothing definite.

Bad--we were told--very bad it was out there, but in what way bad it was impossible to judge, even from the knowledge we had of life in less remote regions. Who would venture to draw conclusions from the little we knew as to the thousand small details which made up that grey, monotonous existence? Who could clearly bring them before the imagination? Only experience could reveal them in their appalling nakedness. Of one thing we were certain, that was that in a measure as the populousness decreases, and you move away in a centrifugal direction from where we were, life becomes harder and more and more distressing for human beings. In the south, on the wild high plateaus of the Aldon; in the east, on the mountain slopes of the Stanovoi-Chebret, where a single Tungus family constitutes the sole population along a river of 300 versts; in the west on the desolate heights of the Viluj, near the great Zeresej Lake; in the north at the mysterious outlets of the Quabrera, the desert places of the Olensk, Indigirika, and Kolyma, life becomes like a Danteesque hell, consisting in nothing but ice, snow and gales, and lighted up by the lurid blood-red rays of the northern light.

But no! those deserts, equal in extent to the half of Europe, are only the purgatory, not yet the real Siberian hell. You still find woods there, poor, thin, dwarfed woods, it is true, but where there is wood there is fire and vitality. The true hell of human torture begins beyond the line of the woods; then there is nothing but ice and snow; ice that does not even melt in the plains in summer--and in the midst of that icy desert, miserable human beings thrown upon this shore by an alien fate.

I shall never forget the impression which any chance bit of information on the characteristic features, the horrible details of that life, used to make upon me. Even clearly defined facts and exact technical terms bear quite a different aspect in the light of such unusual local conditions.

I have a vivid remembrance of a story told me by a former official; he described to me how when he was stationed in V. as Ispravnik, 'a certain gentleman' was sent out to him with orders to take him to the settlement in Zaszyversk.[1]

[Footnote 1: Pronounce: Zashiversk.]

'You see, little brother,' said the ex-Ispravnik, 'the town of Zaszyversk does exist. Even on a small map of Siberia you can easily find it to the right of a large blank space; if you remember your geography lessons you will even know that it is designated as "town out of governmental bounds". An appointment to such a place means for an official that he is expected to send in his resignation; as for the towns, it means that they have been degraded by having ceased to be the seat of certain local government. In this case there was a yet deeper significance in the description, for the town of Zaszyversk does, as I said, exist, but only in the imagination of cartographers and in geography manuals, not in reality. So much so is it non-existent that not a single house, not a yurta,[1] not a hovel marks the place which is pointed out to you on the map. When I read the order I could not believe my eyes, and though I was sober I reeled. I called another official and showed him the curious document.

[Footnote 1: Yurta: hut of the native Yakut.]

'He was an old, experienced hand at the office, but when he saw this order, the paper dropped from his hands. "Where to?" I asked. "To Zaszyversk!" We looked at each other. Nice things that young man must have been up to! There he stood, looked and listened and understood nothing.

'He was a handsome fellow but gloomy and stuck up. I asked him one thing after another, was he in need of anything? and so on, but he answered nothing but "Yes" or "No". Well, my little brother, I thought to myself, you will soon sing a different tune! I ordered three troikas to be brought round; he was put into the first with the Cossack who escorted him, I was in the second with an old Cossack, who remembered where this town of Zaszyversk had once stood, and the third contained provisions; then we started. First we drove straight on for twenty-four hours; during this time we still stopped at stations where we changed horses, and we covered 200 versts. The second and third days we covered 150 versts, but we did not meet a living soul, and we spent the nights in the large barnlike buildings without windows or chimneys and with only a fireplace, which are found on the road; they are called "povarnia".

'Our prisoner was obviously beginning to feel rather bad, so he addressed me from time to time; at last he tried to get information out of me concerning the life in Zaszyversk. "How many inhabitants were there? what was the town like? was there any chance of his finding something to do there, perhaps private lessons?" But now it was my turn to answer him: "Yes" or "No". On the fourth day, towards morning, we entered upon a glacier. We had arrived in the region where the ice does not disappear even in summer. When we had advanced ten versts on the ice, the old Cossack showed me the place where sixty years ago a few yurtas had stood which were called in geographical terms "Zaszyversk, town out of governmental bounds".

"Stop," I cried, "let the young gentleman get out; here we are! This is the town of Zaszyversk...."

'The man did not understand at once, he opened his eyes wide and thought it was a joke, or that I had lost my reason. I had to explain the situation to him.... At last he understood.'

The ex-Ispravnik laughed dryly. 'Will you believe me or not?' he continued. 'Look here, I swear by the cross'--he crossed himself spaciously, bowing to the images of the saints--that fellow's eyes became glassy... his jaws chattered as in a fever. It was a business!

'And I, a tough old official, I put my hands to my forehead. You should have seen how the gentleman's pride disappeared in a moment; he became soft as wax and so humble... pliable as silk he was!

'"I adjure you by the wounds of Christ," he cried, stretching out his hands to me, "let the love of God come into your heart! I have not been condemned to death, there is nothing very serious against me, I have been too overbearing, that is all."

'"Oh," I said, "well, you see, pride is a great sin."

'And whether you will believe me or won't'--he crossed himself again--' the man wept like a child when I told him I would take him to the nearest Yakut yurta, at a distance of thirty versts from the town of Zaszyversk, and I swear to you for the third time it was with joy that he wept... although he was not much better off in that yurta....'

It is easy to imagine how eagerly we received the news of the arrival of a man who had actually been living somewhere at the end of the world under conditions which had completely isolated him for three whole years; yet it was said that he was returning into this world sound in body and mind. We inhabitants of our own special town were not living in the most enviable of circumstances either, but we all knew that they were infinitely happier than they might have been.

A passionate desire seized us to look upon that life out there in its unveiled nakedness, its horrible cruelty. This curiosity meant more than narrow selfishness; it had a special reason.

The fact that a human being had been able to survive in that far-distant world, bore witness to the strength and resistance of the human spirit; the iron will and energy of the one doubled and steeled the strength of all the others.

What we had heard so far of those who were battling with their fate at the end of the world had not been too comforting. Therefore the question whether and how one could live and suffer there, was a vital one for us.

And now the news came unexpectedly that one of our own class, a man closely allied to us by his intellectual development and a number of ways and customs, had actually lived for three years in a yurta not much better situated than the one behind the imaginary town of Zaszyversk. This unknown youth, student of a university not our own, became dear to us. We all--Russians, Poles, and Jews--bound together by our common fate, made up our minds to celebrate his arrival, and as it was timed for Christmas Eve, we were going to prepare a solemn feast in his honour.

As I was the one who had the greatest experience in culinary affairs, I was charged with the arrangement of the dinner, supported by a young student, and by the intense interest of the whole colony. I am sure that neither I nor my dear scullion have ever in our lives before or after worked as hard for two days in the kitchen as we did then.

The student was not only a great collector of everything useful for our daily life, he was also deeply versed in the knowledge of the Yakut in general. While we were cooking and roasting we told one another the most interesting things, and thus stimulated each other to such a degree that the dinner, originally planned on simple lines, began to assume Lucullian dimensions.

We knew only too well how miserable the life in the nearest Yakut yurtas was, that there was a want of the most necessary European food, such as would be found in the poorest peasant's home; above all, the want of bread--simple daily bread--was very pronounced among the poorer populations. It was not surprising that we two, possessed by gloomy pictures which we recalled to our memory, fell into a sort of cooking-fever. Like a mother who remembers the favourite dishes of the child she has not seen for a long time, and whom she expects home on a certain day, we kept on racking our brains for, agreeable surprises for our guest. One or the other would constantly ask:

'What do you think, comrade, wouldn't he like this or that?'

'Well, of course, he would thoroughly enjoy that. Just think, counting the journeys, it must be a good five years since he has eaten food fit for human beings.'

'Shall we add that?'

'All right!'

And one of us ran to the market-place to fetch the necessary ingredients from the shops, another secured kitchen utensils, and soon another course enriched the menu. At last the supply of kitchen utensils gave out, and want of time as well as physical exhaustion put a stop to further exertions. Our enthusiasm had communicated itself to all the participants of the feast, for they were all of a responsive disposition, and declared themselves charmed with our inventiveness and energy. I and my scullion were proud of our work. A huge fish, weighing twenty pounds, which after much trouble we had succeeded in boiling whole, was considered the crowning success of our labour and art. We rightly anticipated that this magnificent fish, prepared with an appallingly highly seasoned and salted sauce, would move the hardest hearts. Also, we did not forget a small Christmas tree, and decorated it as best we could in honour of our guest.

At last the longed-for day came. The student started at dawn for the nearest posting station to await the newcomer and bring him to us. Before two o'clock, when it began to be dark, we were all assembled, and soon after two the melancholy sound of the sleighbells announced the arrival of the students. We hurriedly pulled on our furs and went out. The sleigh and the travellers were entirely covered with snow, long icicles hung from the horses' nostrils when they whipped into the courtyard, they were covered with a fine crust of ice. Another moment and they stood still in front of the door. Every man bared his head...there were some who had grown grey in misery and sorrow.

I will not describe our first greeting--I could not do so even if I would. We did not know each other, and yet how near we felt! I doubt whether it will ever fall to my share again to be one of a number of human beings so different in birth and station in life, yet so nearly related, so closely tied to each other as we were on the day when we greeted our guest.

He was small and thin--very thin. His complexion showed yellow and black, much more than ours did; he seemed marked for life by an earthen colour; his deeply sunk eyes were the only feature which was burning with vitality, they had a phosphorescent glow.

It had grown quite dark by the time he had changed his clothes and warmed himself, and we were sitting down to our dinner. Noise and vivacity predominated in our small abode; a cheerful mood rose like an overflowing wave, washing away all signs of sorrow and bitterness.

'Let us be cheerful!'

Louder and louder this cry arose, now here, now there, and when our guest took it up even the gloomiest faces brightened. We broke the sacred wafer, then we emptied the first glasses. My industrious scullion had been deeply moved by a folk-song from the Ukraine, one of those songs rich in poetical feeling and simple metaphor which go straight to the heart; he therefore got up to make the welcoming speech, and, encouraged by the tears of joy which rose in the eyes of our guest, he quite took possession of him. He told him that he and I had worked uninterruptedly for two days and nights in the sweat of our brows, so as to give him a noble repast after his many days of privation and hunger; he forecast the whole menu, beginning with his favourite Kutja, he drew close to him and put his arm round his neck, laughing gaily, and seemingly inspiring him so that he wept tears of joy.

Our animated mood rose higher and higher. A storm of applause greeted the first course. The student filled the guest's plate to the brim. At last the harmonious rattle of the spoons replaced the laughing and talking. 'Excellent,' was the universal verdict.

My scullion was in raptures and loudly assented; finally he too became silent and applied himself like us to his plate.

But what in the name of God did this mean? We were all eating, only our guest fumbled about with his spoon and stirred his soup without eating, laughing the while with a suppressed, hardly audible laugh.

'My God, what is it? why don't you eat, comrade?' several voices called in unison. 'The scullion has been exciting him too much! Off with him! Our guest must have serious people next to him.' The student obediently changed places, and we turned to our food again. But still our guest did not eat.

What was the matter? We stopped eating and all eyes were turned questioningly upon him. Our silent anxiety was sufficiently eloquent. He perceived, felt it and said:

'I... forgive me... I... my happiness... I am so sorry... I do not want to trouble you, and I fear I shall spoil your pleasure. I beg you... I entreat you, dear brothers, take no notice of me...it is nothing, it will pass,' and he broke into a strange sobbing laugh.

'Jesus, Mary!' we all cried, for we had not noticed before how unnatural his laugh was; there was no further thought of eating; and he, when he saw the general anxiety, mastered himself with an effort and said rapidly amidst the general silence:

'I thought you knew what the life was like that I have lived for three years, but I see you don't know it; when I realized this I tried... I... well, I tried while you were eating and drinking to swallow a small piece of bread... just a tiny piece of bread... but I cannot do it... I cannot! You see, for three years... three whole years I have tasted no salt... I ate all my food without salt, and this bread is rather salt--very salt in fact, it is burning and scorching me, and probably all the other things are also very salt.' 'Certainly, some were even salted too much in our haste and eagerness,' I answered simultaneously with the student.

'Well then, eat, beloved brothers, eat, but I cannot eat anything; I shall watch you with great pleasure--eat, I beg you fervently!' and with hysterical laughter and tears he sank back into his seat.

Now we understood this laugh which was like a spasm....

Not one of us was able to swallow the food which he had in his mouth.

The misery of the existence of which we had longed to know something had lifted the veil off a small portion of its mysteries.

We all dropped our spoons and hung our heads.

How vain, how small appeared to us now the trouble we had taken about the food, how clumsy our childish enjoyment!

And while we looked at the ravaged face of our brother, convulsed with spasmodic laughter and tears, a feeling of horror seized upon us....

We felt as if the spectre of death had risen from a lonely yurta somewhere behind the lost town of Zaszyversk and was staring at us with cold glassy eyes....

A dead silence brooded over the frightened assembly.

KOWALSKI THE CARPENTER

A SIBERIAN SKETCH

BY

ADAM SZYMINSKI

I made his acquaintance accidentally; the chance which led to it was caused by the peculiar conditions of the Yakut spring. My readers will probably only have a very imperfect knowledge of the Yakut spring.

From the middle of April onwards the sun begins to be pretty powerful in Yakutsk; in May it hardly leaves the horizon for a few hours and is roasting hot; but as long as the great Lena has not thrown off the shackles of winter, and as long as the huge masses of unmelted snow are lying in the taiga,[1] you can see no trace of spring. The snow is not warmed by the earth, which has been frozen hard to the depth of several feet, and this thick crust of ice opposes determined resistance to the lifegiving rays, and only after long, patient labour does the sun succeed in awakening to new life the secret depths of the taiga and the queen of Yakut waters, 'Granny Lena', as the Yakut calls the great river.

[Footnote 1: Primaeval forest.]

In the last days of the month of May, when this battle of vitalizing warmth against the last remnants of the cruel winter is nearing its end, the newly arrived European witnesses a scene which is without parallel anywhere in the west. Every sound resembling a report, however distant and indistinct, has a wonderful effect upon the people out in the open; children and the aged, men and women are suddenly rooted to the spot, turn to the east towards the river, crane their necks and seem to be listening for something.

If the peculiar sounds cease or turn out to be caused accidentally, everybody quietly goes home. But if the reports continue, and swell to such dimensions that the air seems filled with a noise like the firing of great guns or the rolling of thunder, accompanied by subterranean rushing like the coming of a great gale, then these silent people become unusually animated. Joyful shouts of 'The ice is cracking! the river is breaking! do you hear?' are heard from all sides; eagerly and noisily the people run in all directions to carry the news into the farthest cottages. Everybody knocks at the doors he passes, be they his friends' or a stranger's; and calls out the magic word 'The Lena is breaking!' These words spread like wildfire in many tongues through far-off houses, yurtas and Yakut settlements, and whoever is able to move puts on his furs and runs to the banks of the Lena.

A dense crowd is thronging the banks, watching in fascination one of the most beautiful natural phenomena in Siberia.

Gigantic blocks of ice, driven down by the powerful waves of the broad river, are packed to the height of houses--of mountains; they break, they crash; covered with myriads of small needles of ice, they seem to be floating in the sun, displaying a marvellous wealth of colour.

But one must have lived here for at least one winter to understand what it is that drives this crowd of human beings to the river banks. It is not the magnificent display of nature that attracts them.

In the long struggle against winter these people have exhausted all their strength; for many months' they have been awaiting the vivifying warmth with longing and impatience, now they hasten hither to witness the triumph of the sun over the cruel enemy.

An intense, almost childlike joy is depicted on the yellow faces of the Yakuts, their broad lips smile good-naturedly and appear broader still, their little black eyes glow like coals. The whole crowd is swaying as if intoxicated. 'God be praised! God be praised!' they call to each other, turn towards the huge icebergs which are now being destroyed by the friendly element, and shout and rejoice over the defeat of the merciless enemy, driven, crushed and annihilated by the inexorable waves.

When the ice-drifts on the Lena have come to an end, the earth quickly thaws, although only to a depth of two feet. But nature makes the most of the three months of warmth. Within a comparatively short time everything develops and unfolds.

The great plain of Yakutsk offers a charming spectacle; it is fertile, and here and there cultivation already begins to show. Birchwoods, small lakes, brushwood and verdant fields alternate and make the whole country look like a large park, framed by the silver ribbon of the Lena. The surrounding gloom of the taiga emphasizes the natural beauty of the valley. This smiling plain in the midst of the wide expanse reminds one of an oasis in the desert.

The Yakut is by far the most capable of the Siberian tribes; he values the gifts of the life-giving sun and enjoys them to the full. When he escapes from his narrow, stinking winter-yurta he fills his hitherto inhospitable country with life and movement; his energy is doubled, his vitality pulsates with greater strength and intensity. When the 'Ysech', the feast of spring, is over, the animated mood of the population does not abate in the least. The 'strengthening kumis', the ambrosia of the Yakut gods, does not run dry in the wooden vessels, for luxuriant grass covers the ground, and cows and mares give abundant milk.

The sight of the lovely plain and the joyful human beings delighting in the summer had revived me also. This was my first summer in Yakutsk, and I responded to it with my whole being. Daily I went for walks to look at the beauty of the surrounding world, daily I took my sun bath.

My walks usually led me to one of the Yakut yurtas; they are at long distances from each other, lonely and scattered over the whole country. You find them in whatever direction you may choose.

Cold milk and kumis can be had in all these yurtas. It is true both have the nasty smell which the stranger in this part of the world calls 'Yakut odour'; but during the long winter when milk other than from Yakut yurtas was hard to procure, I had got used to this specific smell, so that now it only produced a mild nausea.

One of the many yurtas had taken my fancy, for it was charmingly situated close to the woods in a corner of the raised banks of a long stretch of lake. It belonged to an aged Yakut, well deserving of the honourable designation 'ohonior', given to all the Yakut elders.

The old man was living there with his equally aged wife and a young fellow, a distant relation of his. Two cows and a calf, a few mares and a foal constituted all their wealth.

All the Yakuts are very inquisitive and loquacious. But my friend, the honourable 'ohonior ', possessed these qualities in an unusually high degree, and as he was able to speak broken Russian, I often took occasion to call in for a little talk.

First of all he wished to know who I was, where I came from and what was my business here. Towards the Russians, whether strangers or natives of Siberia, the Yakuts are always on their guard and excessively obsequious. Every Russian, however poorly dressed, is always the 'tojan', the master. Their behaviour towards the Poles, on the other hand, is very friendly. No Yakut ever took the information that I was not a Russian but a 'Bilak'--Polak--with indifference.

'Bilak? Bilak? Excellent brother!' exclaimed even the most reticent among them. The 'ohonior' and I therefore soon became friends, and when he learned that in addition I was versed in the art of writing and might be employed as secretary to the community and draw up petitions to the 'great master'--the 'gubernator'--my value was immensely increased, and this respect saved me from too great an intimacy. Owing to this consideration I was always offered the best milk and kumis, and when the old woman handed me a jug she carefully wiped it with her fingers first, or removed every trace of dirt with her tongue.

One day when I called in passing to drink my kumis, I found the 'ohonior' unusually excited; he was not only talkative, but also in very great spirits. His tongue was a little heavy, although he showed no sign of old age. It turned out that my honourable host had just returned from the town, where he had indulged in vodka to warm his feeble frame.

'The Bilaks are good, are all good,' he stammered, while he crammed his little pipe with tobacco, 'every Bilak is a clerk, or at least a doctor, or even a smith, as good as a Yakut one. You are a good man too, and you must be a good clerk; we all love the Bilaks, a Sacha[1] never forgets that the Bilak is his brother. But will you believe it, brother, it is not long since this is so? I myself was afraid of the Bilaks as of evil spirits until about fifteen years ago, and yet I am so old that the calves have grazed off the meadows seventy times before my eyes. When I saw a Bilak, I would run like a hare wherever my feet would carry me--into the wood or into the bushes, never mind where, so long as I could escape from him. And not only I but everybody dreaded the Bilaks, for, you see, people told each other dreadful things about them, that they had horns and slew everybody, and so on.'

[Footnote 1: The name by which the Yakuts call themselves.]

I ascertained that these fairy-tales had had their origin in the town, and reproached the old man for his credulity, but he bridled up at once.

'Goodness gracious! do you think we believed all that on hearsay? I don't know about other people, but I and all my neighbours believed it because our forefathers knew for certain that every Bilak was terrible and dangerous.'

The old man refreshed himself from the jug and continued:

'Do you see, it was like this. My father was not yet born, my grandfather was a little fellow for whom they were still collecting the "Kalym"[1] when there came to this neighbourhood a Bilak with eyes of ice,[2] a long beard and long moustaches; he settled here, not in the valley but up on yonder mountainside in the taiga. That was not taiga, as you see it now, but thick and wild, untouched by any axe. There the Bilak found an empty yurta and settled in it.'

[Footnote 1: The price for the future wife which is paid in cattle and horses; it is collected early in the boy's life.]

[Footnote 2: The black-eyed Yakuts speak thus of the blue-eyed races.]

'But he had no sooner gone to live there than the taiga became impassable at a distance of ten versts round the cottage. The Bilak ran about with his gun in his hand, and when he caught sight of anyone he covered him with his gun, and unless the man ran away he would pop at him--but not for fun, he didn't mind whom he shot, even if it were a Cossack. What he lived on? The gods of the taiga know! Nobody else did. Every living thing shunned him like the plague. Those who caught sight of him in the forest when he ran about like a devil said that at first he wore clothes such as the Russian gentlemen wear who know how to write, but later on he was dressed in skins which he must have tanned himself. People said he got to look more and more terrible and wild. His beard grew down to his waist, his face got paler and paler and his eyes burnt like flames. Some years passed. Then one winter, at the time of the worst frosts, when a murderous "chijus" broke,[1] he was not seen for several days. As a rule he had been observed from a distance, so the people gave notice in the town that someone should come and ascertain what had happened to him.

[Footnote 1: A column of frozen air, moving southwards. After a chijus, corpses of frozen people are generally found.]

'They came and closed in upon the cottage carefully. There was the Bilak on the bed in his furs, all covered with snow, and in his hand he held a cross. The Bilak was dead; perhaps hunger had killed him, perhaps the frost, or maybe the devil had taken him. Now tell me, was there no reason for us to be afraid of the Bilaks? Here was only a single one who drove all the neighbourhood to flight, and now all of a sudden a great many of you arrived? He! he! he! You know how to write, brother, but you are yet very young! So you thought people had no good reasons for their fears? Well, you see, you were mistaken. A Sacha is cleverer than he looks!'

This legend of a Pole who could not bear to look upon human beings--a legend I repeatedly heard again later--made a deep impression upon me. These woods, these fields where I was walking now had perhaps been haunted by the unfortunate man, driven mad and wild with excess of sorrow.

Had his troubles been beyond endurance or had he been unable to bear the sight of human wickedness and human misery? Or was it the separation from his home, from those dear to him, that had broken him?

Dominated altogether by these thoughts, I returned to the town without paying heed to anything around me. I was walking fast, almost at a run, when a long-drawn call coming from somewhere close by struck upon my ear:

'Kallarra! Kallarra!'

At first I neither understood the call nor whence it came, but on frequent repetition it dawned upon me that it proceeded from the bushes at a little distance in front of me, and that it was meant to be the Yakut call 'Come here, come here, brother!' I even divined, as I came nearer, what manner of man it was that was calling. No Yakut, no Russian, be he a native or a settler, could have mispronounced this Yakut word so badly; it should have been 'Kelere!'

Only my countrymen, the Masurs, could do such violence to the beautiful, sonorous Yakut language. During my long sojourn in Yakutsk I have never met a Masurian peasant who pronounced this word otherwise than 'Kallarra'.

Indeed, there he was, behind the bushes beyond a bridge spanning the marsh or dried-up arm of the Lena--a man in the ordinary clothes of deported criminals; he agitated his arms violently, and continually repeated his call 'Kallarra'!

This was addressed to a Yakut who became visible on the outskirts of the brushwood, but it was in vain, for the wary Yakut had no intention of drawing nearer. The caller must have realized this, for when he arrived at the bridge he called once more 'Kalare! you dog!' Then he ceased and only swore to himself: 'May you burst, may you swell, you son of a dog!'

When he noticed me, he stood still. I came up to him and greeted him in Polish, 'Praised be Jesus Christ!'

The peasant could not get over his amazement.

'Oh Jesus! where do you come from, sir?' he cried.

We soon made friends. He lived somewhere in an uluse,[1] and had gone into the town to hire himself out for work in the gold mines; he had secured work and was to start at once, driving a herd of cattle to his new abode. He was grazing them when I met him, and as some of them had gone astray, and he was unable to drive them all across the bridge singlehanded, he was waiting for someone to come along and help him. I gladly lent him a hand, and when the herd had been got across the bridge and was quietly going along, we began to talk. I asked him with whom he was lodging.

[Footnote 1: A settlement consisting of several yurtas.]

'With Kowalski,' he said.

I knew all the Poles in Yakutsk, but I had never heard of Kowalski.

'Well, I mean Kowalski the carpenter.'

Still I did not know whom he meant.

'Who are his friends? whom does he go to see?' I inquired.

'He is peculiar. They all know him, but he does not go to see them.'

'How do you mean: he does not go to see them?'

'How should he go to see them? He has got clump feet, he has lost his toes with frostbite. When the wounds are closed he can just manage, but when they are open he cannot even move about in his room.'

'How does he manage to live?'

'He does a little carpentering; he has a beautiful workshop and all sorts of tools, but I tell you when he can't stand on his feet he can't do carpentering. Then he is glad when people come and give him orders for brushes--he can make beautiful brushes as well--for sweeping rooms or for brushing clothes. But the rooms here are not swept much, and people rarely brush their clothes either. Now he is ill again.'

'Where does he come from? How long has he been here?'

'He has been here a long time, there were only a few like us when he came. But where he comes from, who he is--I see you don't know Kowalski, or else you wouldn't ask. For you see, when I ask him, or one of the gentlemen, or even the priest, who comes from Irkutsk, he only answers: "Brother, God knows very well who I am and where I come from, but it serves no purpose and is quite unnecessary that you should know it too!" There you are! That's like him. So nobody asks him.'

I inquired very particularly all the same where Kowalski lived. In my imagination the 'Bilak' of the legend who fled from men and this lonely carpenter were blended into one personality, I could not say why. I felt that there must be a mysterious connexion as between all things repeating themselves in the circle of time. Perhaps the great sorrow which--I imagined--had died at the death of the Bilak was still living on quite close to me, in a different shape, but just as great, no less unbearable and fateful to him in whom it now dwelt.

Since that day I had often guided my steps in the direction of Kowalski's yurta. No fresh shavings were added to the old ones lying about near the door and the little windows. They grew drier and blacker every day; perhaps the man who had thrown them there.... I had not the courage to enter. I kept on waiting for another day when perhaps fresh shavings would be added, but none appeared and no noises of work were audible.

At last I made up my mind not to put it off any longer. I left my home with this decision and had already reached a corner of his yurta, when I heard a trembling, weak but pleasant voice singing.

I sat down on the bench in front of the yurta, and I could distinctly hear every word of a sentimental, gently melancholy little ditty which had once been very popular in Poland:

'When the fields are fresh and green. And the spring revives the world.'

But after the third verse the singing suddenly ceased and a voice called out gloomily:

'Doggy, go and bark at the Almighty!'

At first I did not know what this peculiar command meant, but after a short pause I heard the thin bark of a dog, and as the gate of the enclosure was open I drew nearer and saw in the wide open door of the yurta a small black dog, tiny and light, repeatedly raising itself on its hindlegs and barking up at the blue sky while it jumped and turned about.

Of course I went away and put off my visit to a more suitable occasion.

At last I saw him. He was of middle stature, quite greyheaded, and he looked very neglected. The ashen complexion common to all exiles distinguished him in a high degree, so that it gave me pain to look into his face with the black shadows.

If he had not been talking, and moving about, it would have been hard to guess that one was looking at a living being. And yet, glances like lightning would sometimes dart from the large eyes surrounded by broad, dark circles, and they showed that death had not yet numbed the inner life of this moving corpse, but that he was still capable of emotion.

As long as he was sitting I could bear the sight of his suffering face, but when he got up I had to turn away my eyes, for then his clump-feet seemed to cause him the greatest agony.

He spoke Polish correctly and with a pure accent. He carefully avoided any direct or indirect allusion to his past, and shrank equally from information about his native country. He talked exclusively about the present, principally about his dog, with whom he held long conversations. Only once in the course of the few weeks during which I visited him did he get animated: that was when I mentioned Plotsk; his eyes shone as with a hidden fire while he asked: 'Do you know that part?'

I answered that I had lived there for a year, and he said, half to himself:

'I suppose it is all quite changed, so many years have passed. You probably were not born at the time when I came to Siberia. In what part of the province did you stay?'

'Not far from Raciaz.'

He opened his mouth, but he felt he had said too much, or that I was listening with curiosity; enough--he only uttered a long-drawn 'Oh...' and was silent again.

This was the only allusion Kowalski ever made to his past. I felt inclined to draw him out, but he knew how to parry these attempts in a delicate way by calling his dog and saying to him while he caressed him: 'Go, bark at the Almighty!' And the obedient creature would continue for a long time to bark at the sky.

As soon as Kowalski gave this order, it was a sure sign that he would not open his mouth except for conversation about his dog, of which he never tired.

Although this dog was quite ordinary, he was in several ways distinguished from his Yakut brothers. For one thing he had no name and was simply addressed as 'Doggy', though he was his master's pet and was attached to the house and enclosure.

'Why didn't you give your dog a name?' I asked casually.

'What's the good of a name? If people had not invented so many names and called each other simply "Man", they would perhaps remember better that we are all men together.'

So the dog remained nameless. He was of a graceful and delicate build and fast, quite unlike the heavier, thickset, thick-coated native dogs; his hair was short, soft, and silky. His appearance had condemned him to an isolated and lonely life. Attempts at participation in the canine social life had failed deplorably; he had returned from these expeditions lame and bleeding all over, and after some vain repetitions he had given up the hope of satisfying his social instincts and did not leave the enclosure any more. He was surprisingly sedate for his delicate organism and thin, mobile little frame, but this was not the calm sedateness of the strong, shaggy Yakut dogs, against whom he obviously harboured a certain hatred and bitterness, because these big, powerful creatures would not recognize the rights of the weak. Except for his master, he showed no affection for anyone and accepted no favours--perhaps he had no belief in them, and only responded to a caress with a low growl.

Some weeks passed and Kowalski was no better, on the contrary he seemed to get worse with every day, and we were all convinced that this illness was his last. God knows whether he was equally convinced, but he certainly had a foreboding of his death, for he hardly ever talked now. For a few days longer he obstinately struggled against the weakness which was overpowering him, and walked about his yurta, even tinkered at some brushes which he had begun; at last he gave it up and took to his bed. One morning, when I had just sat down to my breakfast, the locksmith Wladyslaw Piotrowski, Kowalski's nearest friend, came to my window and asked me to accompany him to our patient.

'It might ease his last hour when he sees that he is not quite forsaken,' said the kind man. 'Perhaps you would like to take a book with you,' he added. I took the New Testament and went with him.

'Is he so very bad?' I asked on the way.

'I should think so; he looks quite black and says himself that he is sure he will die to-day.'

We soon arrived at Kowalski's yurta. There was no trace of the usual sick-room smell of medicines, for Kowalski believed neither in doctors nor in medicines. But an air of sadness and desolation pervaded the room. The little dog lay curled up under the bed, from which, notwithstanding the open window, an unpleasant smell reminded one that the sick man was no longer able to get up.

He looked so unlike a living being that we concluded, on entering and seeing him lying there with his eyes closed, that he was dead. The locksmith went up to the bed, put his hand under the bedclothes and touched his feet; they were cold. But Kowalski called out loudly and emphatically as I had never heard him before:

'I am alive! I am glad that you have come, for I should like to speak to you of death.'

The haste and anxiety with which these words were uttered bore out our premonition that we had only just come in time; we looked at each other; Kowalski caught this look and understood it.

'I know,' he said, 'that I shall die soon, it would be vain to hide from myself what I can see quite clearly. That is why I want to speak to you. I was afraid no one would come... I was afraid no one would hear what I have got to say and that he whom you call the Merciful God would take away my power of speech... I thank you for your thought. May you not be lonely either when your hour of death calls you from an unhappy life.'

Kowalski stopped; only his brow, which was alternately contracted and smoothed, showed that the dying man was trying with his last remnant of strength to collect his thoughts and to retain the last spark of life.

It was early morning, and the sun threw two great sheaves of golden rays through the window on to the wall where the bed stood. From the wide expanse of fields and the archipelago of islands in the river, redolent with luxurious vegetation, life and the echoes of life and movement emanated like a melodious song, a great hymn of thanksgiving in the bright sunshine; it penetrated to the bed of the dying man and formed an indescribable contrast to what was passing inside the yurta.

This brightness, this noise as of a great song of life, was like an irony, like scorn levelled at the deathbed of this living corpse....

Meanwhile Kowalski had begun to speak.

'Long ago,' he said--'it must be about forty years--I was exiled to the steppes of Orenburg. I was young and strong, I trusted in God and had confidence in men and in myself. I may have been right or I may have been wrong, but I thought it was my duty not to leave my energy to the chance of fate, but to try and find a wider field of activity than was open to me in this country. Homesickness too urged me on, and after two years I escaped....

'I was punished by being sent to Tomsk, but this did not daunt me. I started my life afresh with renewed energy, lived on bread and water until I had saved enough for what I needed, and escaped again....

'For this second flight I was punished as an obstinate backslider, and it took several years before I could make another attempt, but that time I got farther away than before. It was an unusually hard winter, I had no money and only insufficient clothing. My feet were frostbitten, and I lost my toes. That was a hard blow, especially as they sent me beyond the Yenessi this time.

'My situation was difficult; the country was dreary and desolate, it was hard to earn a living. But although I had no toes I managed to learn a trade or two, and one or the other used to bring me in a little income, small but sure.

'This time I waited six years, then, without regard for the state of my feet, I started off again....

'You see, I had no more confidence in my strength. I was ill and broken, it was not the same goal as before that drew me westwards.... I wanted to die there... to die there....

'I dreamt of dying on my mother's grave as of a great happiness.

'My life had been such that no one except my mother had ever been good to me; I had had no sweetheart, no wife, no children....

'And now, feeling weak and forsaken, I longed for the grave of this one being who had loved me.

'In sleepless nights I felt her hand touching my head, her kiss and the hot tears with which she took her last leave of me, conscious perhaps that our separation would be eternal. I do not know even now whether the longing for my mother or for my native land was the stronger. But it was a hard pilgrimage this time. I could not walk fast because of the wounds on my feet which kept breaking open. I often had to hide for days in the woods like a wild animal.

'Vultures and crows[1]--ill omens of the end--circled over my head, scenting their prey. Worn out with hunger I broke down from time to time, and...fool that I was, I always prayed. I implored the Almighty God, the merciful God, the just God, the God of the poor, the God of the forsaken:

[Footnote 1: Siberian fugitives look upon them with superstition.]

'"Help me, have mercy on me! Gracious Father! send me death, I ask for no other mercy than death! I will give it to myself, but only there...."

'Two years passed before I reached the province of Perm. I had never before got so far. My heart began to beat joyously, in my head there was only one thought: "I shall see my beloved native soil, and I shall die at my beloved mother's grave." When I left the Ural behind me I definitely believed in my salvation, I threw myself down upon the ground, and for a long, long time I lay there, sobbing and thanking God for His grace and His mercy. But He, the Merciful, was only preparing His last blow, and that same day.... Then they took me as far as Yakutsk!...

'Why did I live on so long in this misery?

'Why did I wait here for such an end as this?

'Because I wanted to see what God intended to do to me. 'Now see what He has made of a human being who trusted Him like a child, who has never known what happiness in this world meant, nor demanded it, who has never received love from anyone but his mother and, although maimed and crippled, has worked hard until the end, never stretched out his hands for alms, never stolen or coveted his neighbours' possessions, who has ever given away the half of what he had... see what He has made of me!...

'That is why I hate Him, no longer trust in Him....I don't believe in His Saints or His Judgment or His Justice; hear me, brothers, I call you to witness in the hour of my death, so that you should know it and can testify to it before Him when you die.'

He raised himself with an effort, stretched out his hands towards the sun and called with a loud voice:

'I, a dying worm, truly acknowledge Thee to be the God of the satiated, the God of the wicked, the God of the impure, and that Thou hast ruined me, a guiltless man!...'

The sun had risen higher and was now gilding the bed of pain of this living skeleton--terrible to behold in his loose skin.

When he sank back exhausted, we were shocked, for we thought that he would give up the ghost before we had time to comfort him and ease his last hour.

'Let us pray for him,' whispered the locksmith. We knelt down; with trembling hands I pulled out the book; it opened of itself where a bookmarker had been placed at the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John.

Raising my voice I began to read:

'I am the true Vine and My Father is the Husbandman.'

The dying man's chest heaved violently, his eyes were closed. He was now quite covered by the golden rays; it seemed as if the sun meant to reward him at the last moment for his hard life, so closely did the rays hug him, warming his stiff limbs, calming him, kissing him as a mother kisses and caresses her drowsy child and wraps it round with her own warmth.

Kowalski was still alive.

I continued to read the words of Christ, so full of power and faith and deep, blessed hope:

'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you...'

The inspiring words of the Comforter of sufferers and the caress of the vivifying light eased the dying man's pain. He opened his eyes and two great tears welled forth--the last tears which this man had to spare.

The rays of the sun kissed the tears on his ashen countenance and made them shine with divine light; it seemed as if they endeavoured to present to their Creator in pure colours the burning fire which had consumed this man and was concentrated in his tears.

I read on:

'Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy...'

The dying man tried to lift his hands, they fell back powerless, but he murmured in a low, distinct voice: 'Lord, by Thy pain forgive me!'

I could not read further. In silence we knelt, and the dog stood between us, puzzled and looking at his master. Once more the dying man's eyes turned towards us, he opened his mouth, and we heard him say yet more slowly and weakly: 'Doggy, do not bark at the Almighty.'

The faithful creature threw himself whining upon his master's limp hand, from which the life had already fled.

Kowalski's eyes closed, a short, dull rattle came from his throat, his chest sank back, he stretched himself a little: the life of suffering was ended.

When we recovered ourselves we heard the violent barking of the dog, who, without understanding his master's last wish, was faithfully carrying out the sole duty of his life. He barked and growled incessantly, and came back from time to time to the bed and his master's limply hanging hand in expectation of the usual caress.

But his master lay immovable, the cold hand hung stiffly; exhausted and hoarse the dog ran out again into the enclosure.

We left; but at a long distance from the yurta we could still hear the barking of the senseless creature.

FOREBODINGS

TWO SKETCHES BY

STEFAN ZEROMSKI[1]

[Footnote 1: The accent on the Z softens the sound approximately to that of the French g in _gele_.]

I had spent an hour at the railway station, waiting for the train to come in. I had stared indifferently at several ladies in turn who were yawning in the corners of the waiting-room. Then I had tried the effect of making eyes at a fair-haired young girl with a small white nose, rosy cheeks, and eyes like forget-me-nots; she had stuck out her tongue (red as a field-poppy) at me, and I was now at a loss to know what to do next to kill time.

Fortunately for me two young students entered the waiting-room. They looked dirty from head to foot, mud-bespattered, untidy, and exhausted with travelling. One of them, a fair boy with a charming profile, seemed absent-minded or depressed. He sat down in a corner, took off his cap, and hid his face in his hands. His companion bought his ticket for him, sat down beside him, and grasped his hand from time to time.

'Why should you despair? All may yet be well. Listen, Anton.'

'No, it's no good, he is dying, I know it.... I know... perhaps he is dead already.'

'Don't believe it! Has your father ever had this kind of attack before?'

'He has; he has suffered from his heart for three years. He used to drink at times. Think of it, there are eight of us, some are young children, and my mother is delicate. In another six months his pension would have been due. Terribly hard luck!'

'You are meeting trouble half-way, Anton.'

The bell sounded, and the waiting-room became a scene of confusion. People seized their luggage and trampled on each other's toes; the porter who stood at the entrance-door was stormed with questions. There was bustle and noise everywhere. I entered the third-class carriage in which the fair-haired student was sitting. His friend had put him into it, settling him in the corner-seat beside the window, as if he were an invalid, and urging him to take comfort. It did not come easy to him, the words seemed to stick in his throat. The fair-haired boy's face twitched convulsively, and his eyelids closed over his moist eyes.

'Anton, my dear fellow,' the other said, 'well, you understand what I mean; God knows. You may be sure... confound it all!'

The second bell sounded, and then the third. The sympathizing friend stepped out of the carriage, and, as the train started, he waved an odd kind of farewell greeting, as if he were threatening him with his fists.

In the carriage were a number of poor people, Jews, women with enormously wide cloaks, who had elbowed their way to their seats, and sat chattering or smoking.

The student stood up and looked out of the window without seeing. Lines of sparks like living fire passed by the grimy window-pane, and balls of vapour and smoke, resembling large tufts of wool, were dashed to pieces and hurried to the ground by the wind. The smoke curled round the small shrubs growing close to the ground, moistened by the rain in the valley. The dusk of the autumn day spread a dim light over the landscape, and produced an effect of indescribable melancholy. Poor boy! Poor boy!

The loneliness of boundless sorrow was expressed in his weary look as he gazed out of the window. I knew that the pivot on which all his emotions turned was the anxiety of uncertainty, and that beyond the bounds of conscious thought an unknown loom was weaving for him a shadowy thread of hope. He saw, he heard nothing, while his vacant eyes followed the balls of smoke. As the train travelled along, I knew that he was miserable, tired out, that he would have liked to cry quietly. The thread of hope wound itself round his heart: Who could tell? perhaps his father was recovering, perhaps all would be well?

Suddenly (I knew it would come), the blood rushed from his face, his lips went pale and tightened; he was gazing into the far distance with wide-open eyes. It was as if a threatening hand, piercing the grief, loneliness and dread that weighed on him, was pointing at him, as if the wind were rousing him with the cry: 'Beware!' His thread of hope was strained to breaking-point, and the naked truth, which he had not quite faced till that minute, struck him through the heart like a sword.

Had I approached him at that instant, and told him I was an omniscient spirit and knew his village well, and that his father was not lying dead, he would have fallen at my feet and believed, and I should have done him an infinite kindness.

But I did not speak to him, and I did not take his hand. All I wished to do was merely to watch him with the interest and insatiable curiosity which the human heart ever arouses in me.

'Let my fate go whither it listeth.' (_Oedipus Tyrannus_.)

In the darkest corner of the ward, in the bed marked number twenty-four, a farm labourer of about thirty years of age had been lying for several months. A black wooden tablet, bearing the words 'Caries tuberculosa', hung at the head of the bed, and shook at each movement of the patient. The poor fellow's leg had had to be amputated above the knee, the result of a tubercular decay of the bone. He was a peasant, a potato-grower, and his forefathers had grown potatoes before him. He was now on his own, after having been in two situations; had been married for three years and had a baby son with a tuft of flaxen hair. Then suddenly, from no cause that he could tell, his knee had pained him, and small ulcers had formed. He had afforded himself a carriage to the town, and there he had been handed over to the hospital at the expense of the parish.

He remembered distinctly how on that autumn afternoon he had driven in the splendid, cushioned carriage with his young wife, how they had both wept with fright and grief, and when they had finished crying had eaten hard-boiled eggs: but what had happened after that had all become blurred--indescribably misty. Yet only partially so.

Of the days in the hospital with their routine and monotony, creating an incomprehensible break in his life, his memory retained nothing; but the unchanging grief, weighing like a slab of stone on a grave, was ever present in his soul with inexorable and brutal force during these many months. He only half recalled the strange wonders that had been worked on him: bathing, feeding, probing into the wound, and later on the operation. He had been carried into a room full of gentlemen wearing aprons spotted with blood; he was conscious also of the mysterious, intrepid courage which, like a merciful hand, had supported him from that hour.

After having gazed at the awe-inspiring phenomena which surrounded him in the semicircle of the hospital theatre, he had slept during the operation. His simple heart had not worked out the lesson which sleep, the greatest mistress on earth, teaches. After the operation everything had been veiled by mortal lassitude. This had continued, but in the afternoon and at night they had mixed something heavy, like a stone ball, into his drinking-cup, and waves of warmth had flowed to the toes of his healthy foot from the cup. Thoughts chased one another swiftly, like tiny quicksilver balls through some corner of his brain, and while he lay bathed in perspiration, and his eyelids closed of their own accord, not in sleep but in unconsciousness, he had been pursued by strange, half-waking visions.

Everything real seemed to disappear, only dimly lighted, vacant space remained, pervaded by the smell of chloroform. He seemed to be in the interior of a huge cone, stretching along the ground like a tunnel. Far away in the distance, where it narrowed towards the opening, there was a sparkling, white spot; if he could get there, he might escape. He seemed to be travelling day and night towards that chink along unending spiral lines running within the surface of the tunnel; he travelled under compulsion and with great effort, slowly, like a snail, although within him something leapt up like a rabbit caught in a snare, or as if wings were fluttering in his soul. He knew what was beyond that chink. Only a few steps would lead him to the ridge under the wood... to his own four strips of potato-field! And whenever he roused himself mechanically from his apathy he had a vision of the potato-harvest. The transparent autumn-haze in the fields was bringing objects that were far off into relief, and making them appear perfectly distinct. He saw himself together with his young wife, digging beautiful potatoes, large as their fists.

On the hillock, amid the stubble, the herdsmen were assembled in groups, their wallets slung round them; they were crouching on their heels, had collected dry juniper and lighted a fire; with bits of sticks they were scraping out the baked potatoes from the ashes. The rising smoke scented the air fragrantly with juniper.

At times, when he was better and more himself, when the fever tormented him less, he sank into the state of timidity and apprehension known only to those harassed almost beyond human endurance and to the dying. Fear oppressed him till his whole being shrank into something less than the smallest grain; he was hurled by fearful sounds and overawing obsessions into a bottomless abyss.

At last the wound on his foot began to heal, and the fever to abate. His mind returned from that other world to the familiar one, and to reflecting on what was taking place before his eyes. But the nature of these reflections had changed. Formerly he had felt self-pity arising from terror; now it was the wild hatred of the wounded man, his overpowering desire for revenge; his rage turned as fiercely even upon the unfortunate ones lying beside him as upon those who had maimed him. But another idea had taken even more powerfully possession of his mind; his thoughts darted forward like a pack of hounds on the trail, in frantic pursuit of the power which had thus passed sentence on him.

This condition of lonely self-torment lasted a long while, and increased his exasperation.

And then, one day, he noticed that his healthy foot was growing stiff and the ankle swelling. When the head-surgeon came on his daily rounds, the patient confided his fear to him. The doctor examined the emaciated limb, unobserved lanced the abscess, perceived that the probe reached to the bone, rubbed his hands together and looked into the peasant's face with a sad, doubtful look.

'This is a bad job, my good fellow. It may mean the other foot; was that what you were thinking of? And you are a bad subject. But we will do it for you here; you will be better off than in your cottage, we will give you plenty to eat.' And he passed on, accompanied by his assistant. At the door he turned back, bent over the sick man, and furtively, so that no one should see, passed his hand kindly over his head.

The peasant's mind became a blank; it was as if someone had unawares dealt him a blow in the dark with a club. He closed his eyes and lay still for a long time... until an unknown feeling of calm came over him.

There is an enchanted, hidden spot in the human soul, fastened with seven locks, which no one and nothing but that picklock, bitter adversity, can open.

Through the lips of the self-blinded Oedipus, Sophocles makes mention of this secret place. Within it are hidden marvellous joy, sweet necessity, the highest wisdom.

As the poor fellow lay silently on his bed, the special conception that arose in his mind was that of Christ walking on the waves of the raging sea, quelling the storm.

Henceforward through long nights and wretched days he was looking at everything from an immeasurable distance, from a safe place, where all was calm and wholly well, whence everything seemed small, slightly ludicrous and foolish, and yet lovable.

'And may the Lord Jesus...may He give His peace to all people,' he whispered to himself. 'Never mind, this will do as well for me!'

A POLISH SCENE

BY

WLADYSLAW ST. REYMONT[1]

[Footnote 1: The stroke softens the l approximately to the sound of w.]

[The place is a solitary inn in Russian Poland, near the Prussian frontier, kept by a Jew named Herszlik, part of whose occupation is to smuggle emigrants for America by night across the border. Besides emigrants and Herszlik are present an old beggar man and his wife or 'doxy', a couple of peasants drinking together, and Jan (or, in diminutive form, Jasiek), a youth who has just escaped from a prison to which he had been sentenced for an attack, under great provocation, on a steward, and now creeps into the inn out of the surrounding forest.]

It was a night of March, a night of rain, cold, and tempest.

The forest, cramped, stiff, soaked to its marrow, and agitated now and then by an icy shiver, threw out its boughs in a sort of feverish panic as if to shake the water from them, and roared the wild note of a creature in torture. At times a damp snow stilled all to helpless silence, broken by a passing groan or the cry of some frozen bird or rattle of some body falling on the boughs. Then once more the wind flung itself with fury on the woods, dug into their depths with its teeth, tore off boughs, and with a roar of triumph whistled along the glades and swept the forest as with a besom; or from out of the depths of space huge mud-coloured clouds, like piles of rotting hay, strangled the trees in their embrace, or dissolved in a cold unceasing drizzle that might have penetrated a stone. The roads were deserted, flooded with a mixture of mud and foul snow; the villages seemed dead, the fields shrivelled, the rivers ice-fettered; man and life were to be seen nowhere; night ruled alone.

Only in the single inn of Przylecki shone a small light; it stood in the middle of the forest at cross roads; a few cottages were visible on the side of a hill: the rest was the mighty forest.

Jasiek Winciorek pushed forward cautiously from the wood to the road, and at sight of the blinking light walked stealthily to the window, peeped in, then in timid perplexity drew back a few steps till a fresh blast of wind froze him so that the poor boy turned back once more, crossed himself, and entered.

The inn was large, with a floor of clay, and a black ceiling resting on walls out of the perpendicular; these had lost their whitewash, and were pierced by two small windows half-choked up with straw. Directly opposite the latter, behind a wooden railing, stood a cask resting on other barrels, above which smoked the red glare of a naphtha lamp. Over the room lay a dense darkness, only lightened now and then with flashes from an expiring fire in a large old-world fire-place, before which sat a pair of beggars. In a corner might be seen a number of persons huddled together whispering mysteriously. By the cask were two peasants, one clasping a bottle, the other holding out a glass; they often drank healths to one another and nodded sleepily. A fat red damsel was snoring behind the railing. Over all there spread a smell compounded of whisky, sodden clay, and soaked rags.

At times such a stillness fell on the room that one could hear the sounds of the forest, the tinkle of the rain on the window-panes, the crackling of the pine boughs in the fireplace. And then a low door behind the railing opened with a creak, and there appeared the old grey head of a Jew, dressed in his praying gown, and singing in a low voice, while behind him shone a room lighted with small candles, from which issued Sabbath smells and a quiet monotonous dreary sound of singing. Jasiek drank a few glasses one after the other, gnawed half-consciously some mouldy rolls as tough as leather, which he seasoned with a herring, and looked now at the door, now at the window, or listened to the murmur of the voices.

'Marry, no, curse it, I won't marry!' suddenly shouted one of the two peasants, knocking his bottle on the cask and spitting as far as the shoulder of the beggar man at the fire.

'But you must,' whispered the other, 'or repay the money.'

'God! that's nothing! Jevka!'--this to the girl--'half a pint of whisky! I pay!'

'Money is a big thing, though a woman is a bigger.'

'No, curse it, I won't marry! I'll sell myself, borrow, pay back the money, rather than marry that harridan.'

'Just take a drop to my health, Antek: I have something to say to you.'

'You won't get round me. I have said no, and that is no. Why, if I must, I will run away to Brazil or the end of the world with those folk yonder!'

'Silly! just take a drop to my health, Antek: I have something to say to you.'

They drank healths to one another several times, then began kissing, then fell silent, for a child was crying in a corner, and a movement began among the quiet timid crowd.

A tall dried-up peasant appeared out of the darkness and walked out of the inn.

Jasiek moved up to the fire, for the cold was in his bones, and putting his herring on a stick began to toast it over the coals. 'Move up a bit,' he whispered to the beggar man, who had his feet on his wallet, and though quite blind, was drying at the fire the soaked strips he wore round his legs, and talking endlessly in a low voice to the woman by him; she was cooking something and arranging boughs under a tripod on which stood a pot.

Jasiek got warmer, and steam as from a bucket of boiling water went up from his long coat.

'You are badly soaked,' whispered the beggar, sniffing.

'I am,' said Jasiek in a whisper, shivering. The door creaked, but it was only the thin peasant returning.

'Who is that?' whispered Jasiek, tapping the beggar on the arm.

'Those? I don't know him; but those are silly fools going to Brazil.' He spat.

Jasiek said not a word, but went on drying himself and moving his eyes about the room, where the people, apparently grown uneasy, now talked with increasing loudness, now fell suddenly silent, while every moment one of them went out of the inn, and returned immediately.

From the inner room the monotonous chant still reached them. A hungry dog crept out from nowhere to the fire and began to growl at the beggars, but getting a blow from a stick he howled with pain, settled himself in the middle of the room, and with a piteous look gazed at the steam rising from the pot.

Jasiek was getting warmer; he had eaten his herring and rolls, but still felt more sharply than ever that he wanted something. He minutely searched his pockets, but not finding even a farthing there, doubled himself together and gazed idly at the pot and the beams of the fire.

'You want to eat--eh?' asked the beggar woman presently.

'I have... a small rumbling in my belly.'

'Who is it?' the beggar man softly inquired of the woman.

'Don't be afraid,' she growled with malice: 'he won't give you a threepenny bit, not so much as a farthing.'

'A farmer?'

'Yes, a farmer, like you: one who goes about the world'--and she took the pot off the tripod.

'And there are good people in the world--and wild beasts--and pigs out of sties.... Hey?' said the beggar man, poking Jasiek with his stick.

'Yes, yes,' answered the boy, not knowing what he said.

'You have something on your mind, I see,' whispered the beggar.

'I have.'

'The Lord Jesus always said: "If you are hungry, eat; if you are thirsty, drink; but if you are in trouble, don't chatter."'

'Eat a little,' the woman begged the boy; 'it is beggars' food, but it will do you good,' and she poured out a liberal portion on a plate. From the bag she drew out a piece of brown bread and put it in the soup unnoticed; then as he moved up to eat and she saw his worn grey face, mere skin and bone, pity so moved her that she took out a piece of sausage and laid it on the bread.

Jasiek could not resist but ate greedily, from time to time throwing a bone to the dog, who had crept up with entreating eyes.

The beggar man listened a long time; then, when the woman put the pot into his hands, he raised his spoon and said solemnly:

'Eat, man. The Lord Jesus said, give a beggar a farthing and another shall repay thee ten. God be with you!'

They ate in silence, till in an interval the beggar rubbed his mouth with his cuff and said:

'Three things are needful for food to do you good--spirit, salt, bread. Give us spirit, woman!'

All three drank together and then went on eating.

Jasiek had almost forgotten his danger and threw no more timid looks around. He just ate, sated himself with warmth, sated slowly the four-days' hunger that gnawed him, and felt peaceful in the quietness.

The two peasants had left the cask, but the crowd in the corner on benches or with their bags under their heads on the wet floor were still quietly dreaming; and still came, but in ever sleepier tones, the sound of singing from the inner room. And the rain was still falling and penetrating the roof in some places; it dripped from the ceiling and formed shining sticky circles of mud on the clay floor. And still at times the wind shook the inn or howled in the fire-place, scattered the burning boughs and drove smoke into the room.

'There is something for you too, vagabond!' whispered the woman, giving the rest of the food to the dog, who flitted about them with beseeching eyes.

Then the beggar spoke. 'With food in his belly a man is not badly off, even in hell,' he said, setting down the empty pot.

'God repay you for feeding me!' said Jasiek, and squeezed the beggar's hand; the other did not at once let him go, but felt his hand carefully.

'For a few years you have not worked with your hands,' he murmured; but Jan tore his hand away in a fright.

'Sit down,' continued the beggar, 'don't be afraid. The Lord Jesus said: "All are just men who fear God and help the poor orphan." Fearnot, man. I am no Judas nor Jew, but an honest Christian and a poor orphan myself.'

He thought for a moment, then in a quiet voice said:

'Attend to three things: love the Lord Jesus, never be hungry, and give to a man more unfortunate than yourself. All the rest is just nothing, rotten fancies. A wise man should never vex himself uselessly. Ho! we know a dozen things. Eh, what do you say?'

He pricked up his ears and waited, but Jasiek remained stubbornly silent, fearing to betray himself; then the beggar brought out his bark snuffbox, tapped it with his finger, took snuff, sneezed, and handed it to the boy. Then, bending his huge blind face over the fire, he began to talk in low monotonous tones.

'There is no justice in the world; all men are Pharisees and rogues; one man pushes another in front of him out of the way; each tries to be the first to cheat the other, to eat him up. That wasn't the will of the Lord Jesus. Ho! go into a squire's house, take off your cap, and sing, though your throat is bursting, about Jesus and Mary and all the Saints; then wait--nothing comes. Put in a few prayers about the Lord's Transfiguration; then wait. Nothing again. No, only the small dogs whine about your wallet and the maids bustle behind the hedges. Add a litany--perhaps they give you two farthings or a mouldy bit of bread. Curse you! I wish you were dirty, half-blind, and had to ask even beggars for help! Why, after all that praying the whisky to wash my throat with costs me more than they give!' He spat with disgust.

'But are others better off, eh?' he continued, after a sniff. 'Jantek Kulik--I dare say you know him--took a little pig of a squire's. And what enjoyment did he have of it? Precious little. It was a miserable creature, like a small yard dog; you could drown the whole body of him in a quart of whisky. Well, for that he was arrested and put in prison for half a year--and for what? for a miserable pig! as if a pig weren't one of God's creatures too, and some were meant to die of hunger, and some to have more than they can stuff into their throats. And yet the Lord Jesus said: "What a poor man takes, that is as if you had given it for My sake." Amen. Won't you take a drink?'

'God repay you, but it has already turned my head a bit!'

'Silly! the Lord Jesus himself drank at feasts. Drinking is no sin; it is a sin, sure enough, to swill like a pig or to sit without talking when good folk are gossiping, but not to drink the gift of God to the bottom. You just drink my health,' he whispered resolutely.

He drank himself from the bottle with a long gurgle in his throat; then handing it to Jasiek, said merrily:

'Drink, orphan. Observe only three things--to work the whole week, to say your Paternoster, and on Sunday to give to the unfortunate, and then you shall have redemption for your soul. Man, if you can't drink a gallon, drink a quart!'

Thereupon all fell silent. The woman was sleeping with her head drooping by the extinct flame, the man had opened wide his cataract-covered eyes at the glowing coals, and once and again nodded vigorously. In the corner the whispers were silent; only the wind struck the panes more violently than ever and shook the door, and from the inner room burst forth the voices in an ecstasy, it seemed, of pity or despair.

Jasiek, overcome by the warmth of the whisky, felt sleepy, stretched his legs out towards the fire, and felt an irresistible desire to lie down. He fought against it with energetic movements, but every now and then became utterly stiff and remembered nothing. A pleasant warm mist compounded out of the beams of the fire, kindly words, and stillness, wrapped him in darkness and a deep sense of freedom and security. At times he woke suddenly, he could not have said why, glanced over the room, or listened for a moment to the beggar, who was asleep but still muttered: 'For all souls in Purgatory--Ave Maria, gratia plena,' and then, 'Man, I tell you that a good beggar should have a stick with a point, a deep wallet, and a long Paternoster.' Here he woke up, and feeling Jasiek's eyes on him, recovered his wits and began to speak:

'Hear what an old man says. Take a drop to my health, and listen. Man, I tell you, be prudent, but don't force it into any one's eyes. Note everything, and yet be blind to everything. If you live with a fool, be a greater fool; with a lame man, have no legs at all; with a sick man, die for him. If men give you a farthing, thank them as if it were a bit of silver; if they set dogs on you, take it as your offering to the Lord Jesus; if they beat you with a stick, say your Paternoster.

'Man, I tell you, do as I advise and you shall have your wallet full, your belly like a mountain, and you shall lead the whole world in a string like silly cattle.... Eh, eh, I am a man not born to-day but one that knows a dozen things. He that can observe the way of the world, no trouble shall come to him. At the squire's house take your revenge on the peasants; that is a sure farthing and perhaps a morsel from the dinner; at the priest's abuse the peasants and the squires; that is two farthings sure, and absolution too; and when you are in the cottages, abuse everything, and you will eat millet and bacon, and drink whisky mixed with fat.'

Here he began to drowse, still murmuring incoherently, 'Man, I tell you... for the soul of Julina... Ave Maria...', and rocked on the bench.

'Gratia plena... help a poor cripple!' This was the woman babbling in her sleep, as she raised her head from the fire-place; but the man woke up suddenly and cried, 'Be quiet, silly!' for the entrance door was thrown loudly open, and there pushed in among them a tall yellow-haired Jew.

'On to the road,' he called in a deep voice, 'it's time'; and at once the whole crowd of sleepers sprang to their feet, began to put their loads on their backs, to get ready, to push forward into the middle of the room and again for no reason to retire. A low tumult of sound--abuse or complaint--burst from all: there were hot passages of words, cries, curses, gesticulations, or the beginnings of muttered prayers, noise, and crying children--but all kept under restraint, and yet filling the gloomy blackened room with a sense of alarm.

Jasiek awoke completely, and with his shoulders pressed to the now cooling fireplace, looked round curiously at the people as far as he could make them out.

'Where are they going?' he asked the beggar.

'To Brazil.'

'Is it far?'

'Ho! ho! it's the end of the world, beyond the tenth sea.'

'And why?'

'First because they are fools, and second because they are unfortunate.'

'And do they know the way?' Jasiek asked again, hugely astonished.

But the beggar was no longer answering him; pushing on the woman with a stick, he came forward into the middle of the room, fell on his knees, and began in a sort of plaintive chant:

'You are going beyond the seas, the mountains, the forests--to the end of the world. The Lord Jesus bless you, orphans! The Virgin of Czenstochowa keep you, and all the saints help you in return for the farthing that you give to this poor cripple...To the Lord's Transfiguration! Ave Maria....'

'Gratia plena: the Lord be with you,' murmured the woman, kneeling at his side.

'Blessed art thou among women,' answered the crowd and pressed forward.

All knelt; a subdued sobbing arose; heads were bowed; trusting and resigned hearts breathed their emotions in prayer. A warm glow of trust kindled the dull eyes and pinched faces, straightened the bent shoulders, and gave them such force that they rose from their prayer heartened and unconquerable.

'Herszlik, Herszlik!' they called to the Jew, who had disappeared into the inner room. They were eager now to go into that unknown world, so terrible and yet so alluring for its very strangeness; eager to take on their shoulders their new fate and to escape from the old.

Herszlik came out armed with a dark lantern, counted the people, made them range themselves in pairs, opened the door: they began to move like some phantom army of misery, a column of ragged shadows, and disappeared at once in the darkness and rain. For a moment there shone in the gloom and amid the tossing trees the solitary light of their guide, for a moment one could hear amid wailing a tremulous hymn, 'He who casts himself on the care of the Lord....' Then the storm broke out again in what seemed like the groan of dying masses.

'Poor creatures! orphans!' whispered Jasiek; a wild grief filled his heart.

Then he returned to the inn, now dumb and dark, for the girl had extinguished the light and gone to sleep, and the singing had ceased in the inner room: only the beggar remained awake; he and the woman were counting the people's alms.

'A poor parish! two threepenny bits and five and twenty farthings--the whole show! Ha! May the Lord Jesus never remember them or help them!'

He went on babbling, but Jasiek no longer listened. Crouched in the fire-place he hid himself as best he could in his still wet cloak and fell into a stony sleep.

A good while after midnight he was awakened by a sharp tug; a light shone straight into his eyes.

'Hey, brother, get up! Who are you? Have you your passport?'

He came to his senses at once: two policemen stood over him.

'Have you your passport?' the policeman asked again, shaking him like a bundle of straw.

But for answer Jasiek jumped to his feet and struck the man with his fist between the eyes, so that he dropped his lantern and fell backwards, while Jasiek darted to the door and ran out. The other policeman chased him, and being unable to catch him, fired.

Jasiek tottered a moment, shrieked, and fell in the mud, then jumped up at once and was lost in the darkness of the forest.

DEATH

BY

WLADYSLAW ST. REYMONT

'Father, eh, father, get up, do you hear?--Eh, get a move on!'

'Oh God, oh Blessed Virgin! Aoh!' groaned the old man, who was being violently shaken. His face peeped out from under his sheepskin, a sunken, battered, and deeply-lined face, of the same colour as the earth he had tilled for so many years; with a shock of hair, grey as the furrows of ploughed fields in autumn. His eyes were closed; breathing heavily he dropped his tongue from his half-open bluish mouth with cracked lips.

'Get up! hi!' shouted his daughter.

'Grandad!' whimpered a little girl who stood in her chemise and a cotton apron tied across her chest, and raised herself on tiptoe to look at the old man's face.

'Grandad!' There were tears in her blue eyes and sorrow in her grimy little face. 'Grandad!' she called out once more, and plucked at the pillow.

'Shut up!' screamed her mother, took her by the nape of the neck and thrust her against the stove.

'Out with you, damned dog!' she roared, when she stumbled over the old half-blind bitch who was sniffing the bed. 'Out you go! will you...you carrion!' and she kicked the animal so violently with her clog that it tumbled over, and, whining, crept towards the closed door. The little girl stood sobbing near the stove, and rubbed her nose and eyes with her small fists.

'Father, get up while I am still in a good humour!'

The sick man was silent, his head had fallen on one side, his breathing became more and more laboured. He had not much longer to live.

'Get up. What's the idea? Do you think you are going to do your dying here? Not if I know it! Go to Julina, you old dog! You've given the property to Julina, let her look after you...come now...while I'm yet asking you!'

'Oh blessed Child Jesus! oh Mary....'

A sudden spasm contracted his face, wet with anxiety and sweat. With a jerk his daughter tore away the feather-bed, and, taking the old man round the middle, she pulled him furiously half out of the bed, so that only his head and shoulders were resting on it; he lay motionless like a piece of wood, and, like a piece of wood, stiff and dried up.

'Priest.... His Reverence...' he murmured under his heavy breathing.

'I'll give you your priest! You shall kick your bucket in the pigsty, you sinner...like a dog!' She seized him under the armpits, but dropped him again directly, and covered him entirely with the feather-bed, for she had noticed a shadow flitting past the window. Some one was coming up to the house.

She scarcely had time to push the old man's feet back into the bed. Blue in the face, she furiously banged the feather-bed and pushed the bedding about.

The wife of the peasant Dyziak came into the room.

'Christ be praised.'

'In Eternity...' growled the other, and glanced suspiciously at her out of the corners of her eyes.

'How do you do? Are you well?'

'Thank God... so so...'

'How's the old man? Well?'

She was stamping the snow off her clogs near the door.

'Eh... how should he be well? He can hardly fetch his breath any more.'

'Neighbour... you don't say so... neighbour...' She was bending down over the old man.

'Priest,' he sighed.

'Dear me... just fancy... dear me, he doesn't know me! The poor man wants the priest. He's dying, that's certain, he's all but dead already... dear me! Well, and did you send for his Reverence?'

'Have I got any one to send?'

'But you don't mean to let a Christian soul die without the sacrament?'

'I can't run off and leave him alone, and perhaps...he may recover.'

'Don't you believe it... hoho... just listen to his breathing. That means that his inside is withering up. It's just as it was with my Walek last year when he was so ill.'

'Well, dear, you'd better go for the priest, make haste... look!'

'All right, all right. Poor thing! He looks as if he couldn't last much longer. I must make haste... I'm off...' and she tied her apron more firmly over her head.

'Good-bye, Antkowa.'

'Go with God.'

Dyziakowa went out, while the other woman began to put the room in order; she scraped the dirt off the floor, swept it up, strewed wood-ashes, scrubbed her pots and pans and put them in a row. From time to time she turned a look of hatred on to the bed, spat, clenched her fists, and held her head in helpless despair.

'Fifteen acres of land, the pigs, three cows, furniture, clothes--half of it, I'm sure, would come to six thousand... good God!'

And as though the thought of so large a sum was giving her fresh vigour, she scrubbed her saucepans with a fury that made the walls ring, and banged them down on the board.

'May you... may you!' She continued to count up: 'Fowls, geese, calves, all the farm implements. And all left to that trull! May misery eat you up... may the worms devour you in the ditch for the wrong you have done me, and for leaving me no better off than an orphan!'

She sprang towards the bed in a towering rage and shouted:

'Get up! 'And when the old man did not move, she threatened him with her fists and screamed into his face:

'That's what you've come here for, to do your dying here, and I am to pay for your funeral and buy you a hooded cloak... that's what he thinks. I don't think! You won't live to see me do it! If your Julina is so sweet, you'd better make haste and go to her. Was it I who was supposed to look after you in your dotage? She is the pet, and if you think...'

She did not finish, for she heard the tinkling of the bell, and the priest entered with the sacrament.

Antkowa bowed down to his feet, wiping tears of rage from her eyes, and after she had poured the holy water into a chipped basin and put the asperges-brush beside it, she went out into the passage, where a few people who had come with the priest were waiting already.

'Christ be praised.'

'In Eternity.'

'What is it?'

'Oh nothing! Only that he's come here to give up... with us, whom he has wronged. And now he won't give up. Oh dear me... poor me!'

She began to cry.

'That's true! He will have to rot, and you will have to live,' they all answered in unison and nodded their heads.

'One's own father,' she began again. '... Have we, Antek and I, not taken care of him, worked for him, sweated for him, just as much as they? Not a single egg would I sell, not half a pound of butter, but put it all down his throat; the little drop of milk I have taken away from the baby and given it to him, because he was an old man and my father... and now he goes and gives it all to Tomek. Fifteen acres of land, the cottage, the cows, the pigs, the calf, and the farm-carts and all the furniture... is that nothing? Oh, pity me! There's no justice in this world, none... Oh, oh!'

She leant against the wall, sobbing loudly.

'Don't cry, neighbour, don't cry. God is full of mercy, but not always towards the poor. He will reward you some day.'

'Idiot, what's the good of talking like that?' interrupted the speaker's husband. 'What's wrong is wrong. The old man will go, and poverty will stay.'

'It's hard to make an ox move when he won't lift up his feet,' another man said thoughtfully.

'Eh... You can get used to everything in time, even to hell,' murmured a third, and spat from between his teeth.

The little group relapsed into silence. The wind rattled the door and blew snow through the crevices on to the floor. The peasants stood thoughtfully, with bared heads, and stamped their feet to get warm. The women, with their hands under their cotton aprons, and huddled together, looked with patient resigned faces towards the door of the living-room.

At last the bell summoned them into the room; they entered one by one, pushing each other aside. The dying man was lying on his back, his head deeply buried in the pillows; his yellow chest, covered with white hair, showed under the open shirt. The priest bent over him and laid the wafer upon his outstretched tongue. All knelt down and, with their eyes raised to the ceiling, violently smote their chests, while they sighed and sniffled audibly. The women bent down to the ground and babbled: 'Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world.'

The dog, worried by the frequent tinkling of the bell, growled ill-temperedly in the corner.

The priest had finished the last unction, and beckoned to the dying man's daughter. 'Where's yours, Antkowa?'

'Where should he be, your Reverence, if not at his daily job?'

For a moment the priest stood, hesitating, looked at the assembly, pulled his expensive fur tighter round his shoulders; but he could not think of anything suitable to say; so he only nodded to them and went out, giving them his white, aristocratic hand to kiss, while they bent towards his knees.

When he had gone they immediately dispersed. The short December day was drawing to its close. The wind had gone down, but the snow was now falling in large, thick flakes. The evening twilight crept into the room. Antkowa was sitting in front of the fire; she broke off twig after twig of the dry firewood, and carelessly threw them upon the fire.

She seemed to be purposing something, for she glanced again and again at the window, and then at the bed. The sick man had been lying quite still for a considerable time. She got very impatient, jumped up from her stool and stood still, eagerly listening and looking about; then she sat down again.

Night was falling fast. It was almost quite dark in the room. The little girl was dozing, curled up near the stove. The fire was flickering feebly with a reddish light which lighted up the woman's knees and a bit of the floor.

The dog started whining and scratched at the door. The chickens on the ladder cackled low and long.

Now a deep silence reigned in the room. A damp chill rose from the wet floor.

Antkowa suddenly got up to peer through the window at the village street; it was empty. The snow was falling thickly, blotting out everything at a few steps' distance. Undecided, she paused in front of the bed, but only for a moment; then she suddenly pulled away the feather-bed roughly and determinedly, and threw it on to the other bedstead. She took the dying man under the armpits and lifted him high up.

'Magda! Open the door.'

Magda jumped up, frightened, and opened the door.

'Come here...take hold of his feet.'

Magda clutched at her grandfather's feet with her small hands and looked up in expectation.

'Well, get on...help me to carry him! Don't stare about...carry him, that's what you've got to do!' she commanded again, severely.

The old man was heavy, perfectly helpless, and apparently unconscious; he did not seem to realize what was being done to him. She held him tight and carried, or rather dragged him along, for the little girl had stumbled over the threshold and dropped his feet, which were drawing two deep furrows in the snow.

The penetrating cold had restored the dying man to consciousness, for in the yard he began to moan and utter broken words:

'Julisha...oh God...Ju...'

'That's right, you scream...scream as much as you like, nobody will hear you, even if you shout your mouth off!'

She dragged him across the yard, opened the door of the pigsty with her foot, pulled him in, and dropped him close to the wall.

The sow came forward, grunting, followed by her piglets.

'Malusha! malu, malu, malu!'

The pigs came out of the sty and she banged the door, but returned almost immediately, tore the shirt open on the old man's chest, tore off his chaplet, and took it with her.

'Now die, you leper!'

She kicked his naked leg, which was lying across the opening, with her clog, and went out.

The pigs were running about in the yard; she looked back at them from the passage.

'Malusha! malu, malu, malu!'

The pigs came running up to her, squeaking; she brought out a bowlfull of potatoes and emptied it. The mother-pig began to eat greedily, and the piglets poked their pink noses into her and pulled at her until nothing but their loud smacking could be heard.

Antkowa lighted a small lamp above the fireplace and tore open the chaplet, with her back turned towards the window. A sudden gleam came into her eyes, when a number of banknotes and two silver roubles fell out.

'It wasn't just talk then, his saying that he'd put by the money for the funeral.' She wrapped the money up in a rag and put it into the chest.

'You Judas! May eternal blindness strike you!'

She put the pots and pans straight and tried to cheer the fire which was going out.

'Drat it! That plague of a boy has left me without a drop of water.'

She stepped outside and called 'Ignatz! Hi! Ignatz!'

A good half-hour passed, then the snow creaked under stealthy footsteps and a shadow stole past the window. Antkowa seized a piece of wood and stood by the door which was flung wide open; a small boy of about nine entered the room.

'You stinking idler! Running about the village, are you? And not a drop of water in the house!'

Clutching him with one hand she beat the screaming child with the other.

'Mummy! I won't do it again.... Mummy, leave off.... Mumm...'

She beat him long and hard, giving vent to all her pent-up rage.

'Mother! Ow! All ye Saints! She's killing me!'

'You dog! You're loafing about, and not a drop of water do you fetch me, and there's no wood am I to feed you for nothing, and you worrying me into the bargain?' She hit harder.

At last he tore himself away, jumped out by the window, and shouted back at her with a tear-choked voice:

'May your paws rot off to the elbows, you dog of a mother! May you be stricken down, you sow!... You may wait till you're manure before I fetch you any water!'

And he ran back to the village.

The room suddenly seemed strangely empty. The lamp above the fireplace trembled feebly. The little girl was sobbing to herself.

'What are you snivelling about?'

'Mummy...oh... oh...grandad...'

She leant, weeping, against her mother's knee.

'Leave off, idiot!'

She took the child on her lap, and, pressing her close, she began to clean her head. The little thing babbled incoherently, she looked feverish; she rubbed her eyes with her small fists and presently went to sleep, still sobbing convulsively from time to time.

Soon afterwards the husband returned home. He was a huge fellow in a sheepskin, and wore a muffler round his cap. His face was blue with cold; his moustache, covered with hoar-frost, looked like a brush. He knocked the snow off his boots, took muffler and cap off together, dusted the snow off his fur, clapped his stiff hands against his arms, pushed the bench towards the fire, and sat down heavily.

Antkowa took a saucepan full of cabbage off the fire and put it in front of her husband, cut a piece of bread and gave it him, together with the spoon. The peasant ate in silence, but when he had finished he undid his fur, stretched his legs, and said: 'Is there any more?'

She gave him the remains of their midday porridge; he spooned it up after he had cut himself another piece of bread; then he took out his pouch, rolled a cigarette and lighted it, threw some sticks on the fire and drew closer to it. A good while later he looked round the room. 'Where's the old man?'

'Where should he be? In the pigsty.'

He looked questioningly at her.

'I should think so! What should he loll in the bed for, and dirty the bedclothes? If he's got to give up, he will give up all the quicker in there.... Has he given me a single thing? What should he come to me for? Am I to pay for his funeral and give him his food? If he doesn't give up now--and I tell you, he is a tough one--then he'll eat us out of house and home. If Julina is to have everything let her look after him--that's nothing to do with me.'

'Isn't my father... and cheated us... he has. I don't care.... The old speculator!'

Antek swallowed the smoke of his cigarette and spat into the middle of the room.

'If he hadn't cheated us we should now have... wait a minute... we've got five... and seven and a half... makes... five and... seven...'

'Twelve and a half. I had counted that up long ago; we could have kept a horse and three cows... bah!... the carrion!'

Again he spat furiously.

The woman got up, laid the child down on the bed, took the little rag bundle from the chest and put it into her husband's hand.

'What's that?'

'Look at it.'

He opened the linen rag. An expression of greed came into his face, he bent forward towards the fire with his whole frame, so as to hide the money, and counted it over twice. 'How much is it?'

She did not know the money values.

'Fifty-four roubles.'

'Lord! So much?'

Her eyes shone; she stretched out her hand and fondled the money.

'How did you come by it?'

'Ah bah... how? Don't you remember the old man telling us last year that he had put by enough to pay for his funeral?'

'That's right, he did say that.'

'He had stitched it into his chaplet and I took it from him; holy things shouldn't knock about in a pigsty, that would be sinful; then I felt the silver through the linen, so I tore that off and took the money. That is ours; hasn't he wronged us enough?'

'That's God's truth. It's ours; that little bit at least is coming back to us. Put it by with the other money, we can just do with it. Only yesterday Smoletz told me he wanted to borrow a thousand roubles from me; he will give his five acres of ploughed fields near the forest as security.'

'Have you got enough?'

'I think I have.'

'And will you begin to sow the fields yourself in the spring?'

'Rather... if I shouldn't have quite enough now, I will sell the sow; even if I should have to sell the little ones as well I must lend him the money. For he won't be able to redeem it,' he added, 'I know what I know. We shall go to the lawyer and make a proper contract that the ground will be mine unless he repays the money within five years.'

'Can you do that?'

'Of course I can. How did Dumin get hold of Dyziak's fields?... Put it away; you may keep the silver, buy what you like with it. Where's Ignatz?'

'He's run off somewhere. Ha! no water, it's all gone....'

The peasant got up without a word, looked after the cattle, went in and out, fetched water and wood.

The supper was boiling in the saucepan. Ignatz cautiously crept into the room; no one spoke to him. They were all silent and strangely ill at ease. The old man was not mentioned; it was as if he had never been.

Antek thought of his five acres; he looked upon them as a certainty. Momentarily the old man came into his mind, and then again the sow he had meant to kill when she had finished with the sucking-pigs. Again and again he spat when his eyes fell on the empty bedstead, as if he wanted to get rid of an unpleasant thought. He was worried, did not finish his supper, and went to bed immediately after. He turned over from side to side; the potatoes and cabbage, groats and bread gave him indigestion, but he got over it and went to sleep.

When all was silent, Antkowa gently opened the door into the next room where the bundles of flax lay. From underneath these she fetched a packet of banknotes wrapped up in a linen rag, and added the money. She smoothed the notes many times over, opened them out, folded them up again, until she had gazed her fill; then she put out the light and went to bed beside her husband.

Meanwhile the old man had died. The pigsty, a miserable lean-to run up of planks and thatched with branches, gave no protection against wind and weather. No one heard the helpless old man entreating for mercy in a voice trembling with despair. No one saw him creep to the closed door and raise himself with a superhuman effort to try and open it. He felt death gaining upon him; from his heels it crept upwards to his chest, holding it as in a vice, and shaking him in terrible spasms; his jaws closed upon each other, tighter and tighter, until he was no longer able to open them and scream. His veins were hardening till they felt like wires. He reared up feebly, till at last he broke down on the threshold, with foam on his lips, and a look of horror at being left to die of cold, in his broken eyes; his face was distorted by an expression of anguish which was like a frozen cry. There he lay.

The next morning before dawn Antek and his wife got up. His first thought was to see what had happened to the old man.

He went to look, but could not get the door of the pigsty to open, the corpse was barring it from the inside like a beam. At last, after a great effort, he was able to open it far enough to slip in, but he came out again at once, terror-stricken. He could hardly get fast enough across the yard and into the house; he was almost senseless with fear. He could not understand what was happening to him; his whole frame shook as in a fever, and he stood by the door panting and unable to utter a word.

Antkowa was at that moment teaching little Magda her prayer. She turned her head towards her husband with questioning eyes.

'Thy will be done...' she babbled thoughtlessly.

'Thy will...'

'... be done...'

'... be done...' the kneeling child repeated like an echo.

'Well, is he dead?' she jerked out, '...on earth...'

'... on earth...'

'To be sure, he's lying across the door,' he answered under his breath.

'... as it is in Heaven...'

'... is in Heaven...' 'But we can't leave him there; people might say we took him there to get rid of him--we can't have that...'

'What do you want me to do with him?'

'How do I know? You must do something.'

'Perhaps we can get him across here?' suggested Antek.

'Look at that now...let him rot! Bring him in here? Not if...'

'Idiot, he will have to be buried.'

'Are we to pay for his funeral?...but deliver us from evil...what are you blinking your silly eyes for?...go on praying.'

'... deliver...us...from...evil...'

'I shouldn't think of paying for that, that's Tomek's business by law and right.'

'... Amen...'

'Amen.'

She made the sign of the cross over the child, wiped its nose with her fingers and went up to her husband.

He whispered: 'We must get him across.'

'Into the house...here?'

'Where else?'

'Into the cowshed; we can lead the calf out and lay him down on the bench, let him lie in state there, if he likes...such a one as he has been!'

'Monika!'

'Eh?'

'We ought to get him out there.'

'Well, fetch him out then.'

'All right...but...'

'You're afraid, what?'

'Idiot...damned...'

'What else?'

'It's dark...'

'If you wait till it's day, people will see you.'

'Let's go together.'

'You go if you are so keen.'

'Are you coming, you carrion, or are you not?' he shouted at her; 'he's your father, not mine.' And he flung out of the room in a rage.

The woman followed him without a word.

When they entered the pigsty, a breath of horror struck them, like the exhalation from a corpse. The old man was lying there, cold as ice; one half of his body had frozen on to the floor; they had to tear him off forcibly before they could drag him across the threshold and into the yard.

Antkowa began to tremble violently at the sight of him; he looked terrifying in the light of the grey dawn, on the white coverlet of snow, with his anguished face, wide-open eyes, and drooping tongue on which the teeth had closed firmly. There were blue patches on his skin, and he was covered with filth from head to foot.

'Take hold,' whispered the man, bending over him. 'How horribly cold he is!'

The icy wind which rises just before the sun, blew into their faces, and shook the snow off the swinging twigs with a dry crackle.

Here and there a star was still visible against the leaden background of the sky. From the village came the creaking noise of the hauling of water, and the cocks crew as if the weather were going to change.

Antkowa shut her eyes and covered her hands with her apron, before she took hold of the old man's feet; they could hardly lift him, he was so heavy. They had barely put him down on a bench when she fled back into the house, throwing out a linen-rag to her husband to cover the corpse.

The children were busy scraping potatoes; she waited impatiently at the door.

'Have done...come in!... Lord, how long you are!'

'We must get some one to come and wash him,' she said, laying the breakfast, when he had come in.

'I will fetch the deaf-mute.'

'Don't go to work to-day.'

'Go...no, not I...'

They did not speak again, and ate their breakfast without appetite, although as a rule they finished their four quarts of soup between them.

When they went out into the yard they walked quickly, and did not turn their heads towards the other side. They were worried, but did not know why; they felt no remorse; it was perhaps more a vague fear of the corpse, or fear of death, that shook them and made them silent.

When it was broad day, Antek fetched the village deaf-mute, who washed and dressed the old man, laid him out, and put a consecrated candle at his head.

Antek then went to give notice to the priest and to the Soltys of his father-in-law's death and his own inability to pay for the funeral.

'Let Tomek bury him; he has got all the money.'

The news of the old man's death spread rapidly throughout the village. People soon began to assemble in little groups to look at the corpse. They murmured a prayer, shook their heads, and went off to talk it over.

It was not till towards evening that Tomek, the other son-in-law, under pressure of public opinion, declared himself willing to pay for the funeral.

On the third day, shortly before this was to take place, Tomek's wife made her appearance at Antek's cottage.

In the passage she almost came nose to nose with her sister, who was just taking a pail of dishwater out to the cowshed.

'Blessed be Jesus Christ,' she murmured, and kept her hand on the door-handle.

'Now: look at that... soul of a Judas!' Antkowa put the pail down hard. 'She's come to spy about here. Got rid of the old one somehow, didn't you? Hasn't he given everything to you... and you dare show yourself here, you trull! Have you come for the rest of the rags he left here, what?'

'I bought him a new sukmana at Whitsuntide, he can keep that on, of course, but I must have the sheepskin back, because it has been bought with money I have earned in the sweat of my brow,' Tomekowa replied calmly.

'Have it back, you mangy dog, have it back?' screamed Antkowa. 'I'll give it you, you'll see what you will have...' and she looked round for an object that would serve her purpose. 'Take it away? You dare! You have crawled to him and lickspittled till he became the idiot he was and made everything over to you and wronged me, and then...'

'Everybody knows that we bought the land from him, there are witnesses...'

'Bought it? Look at her! You mean to say you're not afraid to lie like that under God's living eyes? Bought it! Cheats, that's what you are, thieves, dogs! You stole the money from him first, and then.... Didn't you make him eat out of the pig-pail? Adam is a witness that he had to pick the potatoes out of the pig-pail, ha! You've let him sleep in the cowshed, because, you said, he stank so that you couldn't eat. Fifteen acres of land and a dower-life like that... for so much property! And you've beaten him too, you swine, you monkey!'

'Hold your snout, or I'll shut it for you and make you remember, you sow, you trull!'

'Come on then, come on, you destitute creature!' 'I... destitute?'

'Yes, you! You would have rotted in a ditch, the vermin would have eaten you up, if Tomek hadn't married you.'

'I, destitute? Oh you carrion!' They sprang at each other, clutching at each other's hair; they fought in the narrow passage, screaming themselves hoarse all the time.

'You street-walker, you loafer... there! that's one for you! There's one for my fifteen acres, and for all the wrong you have done me, you dirty dog!'

'For the love of God, you women, leave off, leave off! It's a sin and a shame!' cried the neighbours.

'Let me go, you leper, will you let go?'

'I'll beat you to death, I will tear you to pieces, you filth!'

They fell down, hitting each other indiscriminately, knocked over the pail, and rolled about in the pigwash. At last, speechless with rage and only breathing hard, they still banged away at each other. The men were hardly able to separate them. Purple in the face, scratched all over, and covered with filth, they looked like witches. Their fury was boundless; they sprang at each other again, and had to be separated a second time.

At last Antkowa began to sob hysterically with rage and exhaustion, tore her own hair and wailed: 'Oh Jesus! Oh little child Jesus! Oh Mary! Look at this pestiferous woman...curse those heathen...oh! oh!...' she was only able to roar, leaning against the wall.

Tomekowa, meanwhile, was cursing and shouting outside the house, and banging her heels against the door.

The spectators stood in little groups, taking counsel with each other, and stamping their feet in the snow. The women looked like red spots dabbed on to the wall; they pressed their knees together, for the wind was penetratingly cold. They murmured remarks to each other from time to time, while they watched the road leading to the church, the spires of which stood out clearly behind the branches of the bare trees. Every minute some one or other wanted to have another look at the corpse; it was a perpetual coming and going. The small yellow flames of the candles could be seen through the half-open door, flaring in the draught, and momentarily revealing a glimpse of the dead man's sharp profile as he lay in the coffin. The smell of burning juniper floated through the air, together with the murmurings of prayers and the grunts of the deaf-mute.

At last the priest arrived with the organist. The white pine coffin was carried out and put into the cart. The women began to sing the usual lamentations, while the procession started down the long village street towards the cemetery. The priest intoned the first words of the Service for the Dead, walking at the head of the procession with his black biretta on his head; he had thrown a thick fur cloak over his surplice; the wind made the ends of his stole flutter; the words of the Latin hymn fell from his lips at intervals, dully, as though they had been frozen; he looked bored and impatient, and let his eyes wander into the distance. The wind tugged at the black banner, and the pictures of heaven and hell on it wobbled and fluttered to and fro, as though anxious to display themselves to the rows of cottages on either side, where women with shawls over their heads and bare-headed men were standing huddled together.

They bowed reverently, made the sign of the cross, and beat their breasts.

The dogs were barking furiously from behind the hedges, some jumped on to the stone walls and broke into long-drawn howls.

Eager little children peeped out from behind the closed windows, beside toothless used-up old people's faces, furrowed as fields in autumn.

A small crowd of boys in linen trousers and blue jackets with brass buttons, their bare feet stuck into wooden sandals, ran behind the priest, staring at the pictures of heaven and hell, and intoning the intervals of the chant with thin, shivering voices: a! o!... They kept it up as long as the organist did not change the chant.

Ignatz proudly walked in front, holding the banner with one hand and singing the loudest of all. He was flushed with exertion and cold, but he never relaxed, as though eager to show that he alone had a right to sing, because it was his grandfather who was being carried to the grave. They left the village behind. The wind threw itself upon Antek, whose huge form towered above all the others, and ruffled his hair; but he did not notice the wind, he was entirely taken up with the horses and with steadying the coffin, which was tilting dangerously at every hole in the road.

The two sisters were walking close behind the coffin, murmuring prayers and eyeing each other with furious glances.

'Tsutsu! Go home!...Go home at once, you carrion!' One of the mourners pretended to pick up a stone. The dog, who had been following the cart, whined, put her tail between her legs, and fled behind a heap of stones by the roadside; when the procession had moved on a good bit, she ran after it in a semi-circle, and anxiously kept close to the horses, lest she should be prevented again from following.

The Latin chant had come to an end. The women, with shrill voices, began to sing the old hymn: 'He who dwelleth under the protection of the Lord.'

It sounded thin. The blizzard, which was getting up, did not allow the singing to come to much. Twilight was falling.

The wind drove clouds of snow across from the endless, steppe-like plains, dotted here and there with skeleton trees, and lashed the little crowd of human beings as with a whip.

'... and loves and keeps with faithful heart His word...,' they insisted through the whistling of the tempest and the frequent shouts of Antek, who was getting breathless with cold: 'Woa! woa, my lads!'

Snowdrifts were beginning to form across the road like huge wedges, starting from behind trees and heaps of stones.

Again and again the singing was interrupted when the people looked round anxiously into the white void: it seemed to be moving when the wind struck it with dull thuds; now it towered in huge walls, now it dissolved like breakers, turned over, and furiously darted sprays of a thousand sharp needles into the faces of the mourners. Many of them returned half-way, fearing an increase of the blizzard, the others hurried on to the cemetery in the greatest haste, almost at a run. They got through the ceremony as fast as they could; the grave was ready, they quickly sang a little more, the priest sprinkled holy water on the coffin; frozen clods of earth and snow rolled down, and the people fled home.

Tomek invited everybody to his house, because 'the reverend Father had said to him, that other-wise the ceremony would doubtless end in an ungodly way at the public-house.'

Antek's answer to the invitation was a curse. The four of them, including Ignatz and the peasant Smoletz, turned into the inn.

They drank four quarts of spirits mixed with fat, ate three pounds of sausages, and talked about the money transaction.

The heat of the room and the spirits soon made Antek very drunk. He stumbled so on the way home that his wife took him firmly under the arm.

Smoletz remained at the inn to drink an extra glass in prospect of the loan, but Ignatz ran home ahead as fast as he could, for he was horribly cold.

'Look here, mother...,' said Antek, 'the five acres are mine! aha! mine, do you hear? In the autumn I shall sow wheat and barley, and in the spring we will plant potatoes... mine... they are mine!... God is my comfort, sayest thou...,' he suddenly began to sing.

The storm was raging, and howling.

'Shut up! You'll fall down, and that will be the end of it.'

'... His angel keepeth watch...,' he stopped abruptly. The darkness was impenetrable, nothing could be seen at a distance of two feet. The blizzard had reached the highest degree of fury; whistling and howling on a gigantic scale filled the air, and mountains of snow hurled themselves upon them.

From Tomek's cottage came the sound of funeral chants and loud talking when they passed by.

'These heathen! These thieves! You wait, I'll show you my five acres! Then I shall have ten. You won't lord it over me! Dogs'-breed... aha! I'll work, I'll slave, but I shall get it, eh, mother? we will get it, what?' he hammered his chest with his fist, and rolled his drunken eyes.

He went on like this for a while, but as soon as they reached their home, the woman dragged him into bed, where he fell down like a dead man. But he did not go to sleep yet, for after a time he shouted: 'Ignatz!'

The boy approached, but with caution, for fear of contact with the paternal foot.

'Ignatz, you dead dog! Ignatz, you shall be a first-class peasant, not a beggarly professional man,' he bawled, and brought his fist down on the bedstead.

'The five acres are mine, mine! Foxy Germans,[1] you... da...' He went to sleep.

[Footnote 1: 'The term 'German' is used for 'foreigner' generally, whom the Polish peasant despises.]

THE SENTENCE

BY

J. KADEN-BANDKOWSKI

'Yakob... Yakob... Yakob!'

The old man was repeating his name to himself, or rather he was inwardly listening to the sound of it which he had been accustomed to hear for so many years. He had heard it in the stable, in the fields, and on the grazing-ground, on the steps of the manor-house and at the Jew's, but never like this. It seemed to issue from unknown depths, summoning sounds never heard before, sights never yet seen, producing a confusion which he had never experienced. He saw it, felt it everywhere; it was itself the cause of a hopeless despair.

This despair crept silently into Yakob's fatalistic and submissive soul. He felt it under his hand, as though he were holding another hand. He was as conscious of it as of his hairy chest, his cold and starved body. This despair, moreover, was blended with a kind of patient expectancy which was expressed by the whispering of his pale, trembling lips, the tepid sweat under his armpits, the saliva running into his throat and making his tongue feel rigid like a piece of wood.

This is what happened: he tried to remember how it had all happened.

They had come swarming in from everywhere; they had taken the men away; it was firearms everywhere...everywhere firearms, noise and hubbub. The whole world was pushing, running, sweating or freezing. They arrived from this side or from that; they asked questions, they hunted people down, they followed up a trail, they fought. Of course, one must not betray one's brothers, but then...who are one's brothers?

They placed watches in the mountains, in the forests, on the fields; they even drove people into the mountain-passes and told them to hold out at any cost.

Yakob had been sitting in the chimney-corner in the straw and dust, covered with his frozen rags. The wind swept over the mountains and penetrated into the cottage, bringing with it a white covering of hoar-frost; it was sighing eerily in the fields; the fields themselves seemed to flee from it, and to be alive, running away into the distance. The earth in white convulsions besieged the sky, and the sky got entangled in the mountain-forests.

Yakob was looking at the snow which was falling thickly, and tried to penetrate the veil with his eyes. Stronger and faster raged the blizzard. Yakob's stare became vacant under the rumbling of the storm and the driving of the snow; one could not have told whether he was looking with eyes or with lumps of ice.

Shadows were flitting across the snowdrifts. They were the outlines of objects lit up by the fire; they trembled on the window-frames; the fire flickered, and the shadows treacherously caressed the images of saints on the walls. The beam played on the window, threw a red light on the short posts of the railing, and disappeared in pursuit of the wind in the fields.

'Yakob...Yakob...Yakob!'

And he had really had nothing to do with it! It had all gone against him continuously, pertinaciously, and to no purpose. It had attached itself to him, clung to the dry flour that flew about in atoms in the tin where the bit of cheese also was kept. It had bewitched the creaking of the windows on their hinges; it had stared from the empty seats along the walls.

But he kept on beating his breast. His forehead was wrinkled in dried-up folds, his brows bristled fantastically into shaggy, dirty tufts. His heavy, blunt nose, powdered with hairs at the tip, stood out obstinately between two deep folds on either side. These folds overhung the corners of his mouth, and were joined below the chin by a network of pallid veins. A noise, light as a beetle's wing, came in puffs from the half-open lips; they were swollen and purple like an overgrown bean.

Yakob had been sitting in Turkish fashion, his hands crossed over his chest, breathing forth his misery so quietly that it covered him, together with the hoar-frost, stopped his ears and made the tufts of hair on his chest glitter. He was hugging his sorrow to himself, abandoning the last remnant of hope, and longing for deliverance. Behind the wrinkles of his forehead there swarmed a multitude not so much of pictures as of ghosts of the past, yet vividly present.

At last he got up and sat down on the bench in the chimney-corner, drew a pipe from his trouser-pocket and put it between his teeth, forgetting to light it. He laid his heavy hands round the stem. Beyond the blizzard and the shadow-play of the flame, there appeared to him the scene of his wife and daughters' flight. He had given up everything he possessed, had taken off his sheepskin, had himself loosened the cow from the post. For a short moment he had caught sight of his wife and daughters again in the distance, tramping through the snow as they passed the cross-roads, then they had been swallowed up in a mass of people, horses, guns, carts, shouts and curses. Since then he had constantly fancied that he was being called, yet he knew that there was no one to call him. His thoughts were entirely absorbed in what he had seen then. With his wife all his possessions had gone. Now there was nothing but silence, surrounding him with a sharp breath of pain and death.

By day and by night Yakob had listened to the shots that struck his cottage and his pear-trees. He chewed a bit of cheese from time to time, and gulped down with it the bitter fear that his cottage might be set on fire.

For here and there, like large red poppies on the snow, the glare of burning homesteads leapt up into the sky.

'Here I am...watching,' he said to himself, when he looked at these blood-red graves. He smiled at the sticks of firewood on his hearth, which was the dearest thing on earth to him. The walls of his cottage were one with his inmost being, and every moment when he saw them standing, seemed to him like precious savings which he was putting away. So he watched for several days; the vermin were overrunning the place, and he was becoming desperate. Since mid-day the silence had deepened; the day declined, and there was nothing in the world but solitude and snow.

Yakob went over to the window. The snow was lying deep on the fields, like a shimmering coat of varnish; the world was bathed in the light of a pale, wan moon. The forest-trees stood out here and there in blue points, like teeth. Large and brilliant the stars looked down, and above the milky way, veiled in vapours, hung the sickle of the moon.

While in the immensity of the night cold and glittering worlds were bowing down before the eternal, Yakob looked, and noticed something approaching from the mountains. Along the heights and slopes there was a long chain of lights; it was opening out from the centre into two lines on either side, which looked as though they were lost in the forest. Below them there were confused gleams in the fields, and behind, in the distance, the glow of the burning homesteads.

'They have burned the vicarage,' thought Yakob, and his heart answered: 'and here am I...watching.'

He pressed against the window-frame, glued his grey face to the panes and, trembling with cold, sent out an obstinate and hostile glance into space, as though determined to obtain permission to keep his own heritage.

Suddenly he pricked up his ears. Something was approaching from the distance across the forest very cautiously. The snow was creaking under the advancing steps. In the great silence it sounded like the forging of iron. Those were horses' hoofs stamping the snow.

This sound, suppressed as it was, produced in him a peculiar sensation which starts in the head and grips you in the nape of the neck, the consciousness that someone is hiding close to you.

Yakob stood quite still at the window, not even moving his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. Not he himself seemed to be trembling, only his rags.

The door was suddenly thrown open and a soldier appeared on the threshold. The light of a lantern which was suspended on his chest, filled the room.

Yakob's blood was freezing. Cossacks, hairy like bears, were standing in the opening of the door, the snow which covered them was shining like a white flame. In the courtyard there were steaming horses; lanceheads were glittering like reliquaries.

Yakob understood that they were calling him 'old man', and asking him questions. He extended his hands to express that he knew nothing. Some of the Cossacks entered, and made signs to him to make up the fire.

He noticed that they were bringing more horses into the yard, small, shaggy ponies like wolves.

He became calmer, and his fear disappeared; he only remained cautious and observant; everything that happened seemed to take hours, yet he saw it with precision.

'It is cold...it is cold!'

He made up the fire for these bandits who stretched themselves on the benches; he felt they were talking and laughing about him, and he turned to them and nodded; he thought it would please them if he showed that he approved of them. They asked him about God knows what, where they were, and where they were not. As though he knew!

Then they started all over again, while they swung their booted legs under the seats. One of them came up to the hearth, and clapped the crouching Yakob on his back for fun, but it hurt. It was a resounding smack. Yakob scratched himself and rumpled his hair, unable to understand.

They boiled water and made tea; a smell of sausages spread about the room. Yakob bit his jaws together and looked at the fire. He sat in his place as though he had been glued to it.

His ears were tingling when he heard the soldiers grinding their teeth on their food, tearing the skin off the sausages and smacking their lips.

A large and painful void was gaping in his inside.

They devoured their food fast and noisily, and an odour of brandy began to fill the room, and contracted Yakob's throat.

He understood that they were inviting him to share the meal, but he felt uneasy about that, and though his stomach seemed to have shrunk, and the sausage-skins and bones which they had thrown away lay quite close to him, he could not make up his mind to move and pick them up.

'Come on!'

The soldier beckoned to him. 'Come here!'

The old man felt that he was weakening, the savoury smell took possession of him.

But 'I shan't go,' he thought. The soldier, gnawing a bone, repeated, 'Come on!'

'I shan't go,' thought Yakob, and spat into the fire, to assure himself that he was not going. All the same...the terribly tempting smell made him more and more feeble.

At last two of them got up, took him under the arms, and sat him down between them.

They made signs to him, they held the sausage under his nose; the tea was steaming, the brandy smelt delicious.

Yakob put his hands on the table, then put them behind him. Black shadows were gesticulating on the walls. He felt unhappy about sharing a meal with people without knowing what they were, never having seen or known them before. They were Russians, thus much he knew. He had a vision of something that happened long ago, he could not distinctly remember what it was, for it happened so very long ago; his grandfather had come home from the fair that was held in the town, shivering and groaning. There had been outcries and curses.

'They are going to poison me like a dog,' he thought.

The wind was changing and moaning under the roof. The fire flickered up and went down; the red flame and the darkness were dancing together on the walls. The wan moon was looking in at the window. Yakob was sitting on the bench among the soldiers like his own ghost.

'They are surely going to poison me,' he kept repeating to himself. He was still racking his memory as to what it was that had happened so long ago to his grandfather during the fair, at the inn. God knows what it was...who could know anything?

'They are going to poison me!'

His sides were heaving with his breath, he was trying to breathe carefully, so as not to smell the repast.

The shadows on the walls seemed to jeer at him. The soldiers were beginning to talk thickly; their mouths, their fingers were shining with grease. They took off their belts and laid their swords aside. The one next to Yakob put his arm round his neck and whispered in his ear; his red mouth was quite close; he passed his hand over Yakob's head, and brought his arm right round his throat. He was young and he was talking of his father.

'Daddy,' he said, and put the sausage between his teeth.

Yakob tried to clench his teeth; but he bit the sausage at the same time.

'Daddy,' said the young soldier again, holding out the sausage for another bite; he stroked his head, looked into his eyes, and laughed. Yakob was sorry for himself. Was he to be fed like a half-blind old man? Couldn't he eat by himself?

When the soldiers saw that Yakob was eating, they burst into shouts of laughter, and stamped their feet, rattling their spurs.

He knew they were laughing at him, and it made him easier in his mind to see that he was affording them pleasure. He purposely made himself ridiculous with the vague idea that he must do something for them in payment of what they were giving him; they struck him on the shoulder-blades to see him gasp with his beanlike mouth, and to see the frightened smile run over his face like a flash of lightning.

He ate as though from bravado, but he ate well. They started drinking again. Yakob looked at them with eagerness, his arms folded over his stomach, his head bent forward; the hairy hand of the captain put the bottle to his mouth.

Now he could laugh his own natural laugh again, and not only from bravado, for he felt quite happy. His frozen body was getting warmed through.

He felt as if a great danger had irrevocably passed.

Gradually he became garrulous, although they hardly understood what he was talking about: 'Yes, the sausage was good... to be sure!' He nodded his head and clicked his tongue; he also approved of the huge chunks of bread, and whenever the bottle was passed round, he put his head on one side and folded his hands, as if he were listening to a sermon. From his neighbour's encircling black sleeve the old face peeped out with equanimity, looking like a withering poppy.

'Daddy,' the loquacious Cossack would say from time to time, and point in the direction of the mountains; tears were standing in his eyes.

Yakob put his swollen hand on his, and waited for him to say more.

The soldier held his hand, pointed in the direction of the mountains again, and sniffled.

'He respects old age... they are human, there's no denying it,' thought Yakob, and got up to put more wood on the fire.

They seized hold of him, they would not allow him to do it. A young soldier jumped up: 'Sit down, you are old.'

Yakob held out his empty pipe, and the captain himself filled it.

So there he sat, among these armed bandits. They were dressed in sheepskins and warm materials, had sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in well-worn grey trousers, his shirt fastened together at the neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a centipede, without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly blessed this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The Cossacks looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This is very nice, very nice.'

To whom would not a blazing fire on a cold winter's night appeal?

They got more and more talkative and asked: 'Where are your wife and children?' They probably too had wives and children!

'My wife,' he said, 'has gone down to the village, she was afraid.' They laughed and tapped their chests: 'War is a bad thing, who would not be afraid?' Yakob assented all the more readily as he felt that for him the worst was over.

'Do you know the way to the village?' suddenly asked the captain. He was almost hidden in clouds of tobacco-smoke, but in his eyes there was a gleam, hard and sinister, like a bullet in a puff of smoke.

Yakob did not answer. How should he not know the way?

They started getting up, buckled on their belts and swords.

Yakob jumped up to give them the rest of the sausages and food which had been left on the plates. But they would only take the brandy, and left the tobacco and the broken meat.

'That will be for you...afterwards,' said the young Cossack, took a red muffler off his neck and put it round Yakob's shoulder.

'That will keep you warm.'

Yakob laughed back at him, and submitted to having the muffler knotted tightly round his throat. The young soldier drew a pair of trousers from his kitbag: 'Those will keep you warm, you are old.' He told him a long story about the trousers; they had belonged to his brother who had been killed.

'You know, it's lucky to wear things like that. Poor old fellow!'

Yakob stood and looked at the breeches. In the fire-light they seemed to be trembling like feeble and stricken legs. He laid his hand on them and smiled, a little defiant and a little touched.

'You may have them, you may have them,' grunted the captain, and insisted on his putting them on at once.

When he had put them on in the chimney-corner and showed himself, they were all doubled up with laughter. He looked appalling in the black trousers which were much too large for him, a grey hood and the red muffler. His head wobbled above the red line as if it had been fixed on a bleeding neck. The rags on his chest showed the thin, hairy body, the stiff folds of the breeches produced an effect as if he were not walking on the ground but floating above it.

The captain gave the command, the soldiers jumped up and looked once more round the cottage; the young Cossack put the sausage and meat in a heap and covered it with a piece of bread. 'For you,' he said once more, and they turned to leave.

Yakob went out with them to bid them Godspeed. A vague presentiment seized him on the threshold, when he looked out at the frozen world, the stars, like nails fixed into the sky, and the light of the moon on everything. He was afraid.

The men went up to their horses, and he saw that there were others outside. The wind ruffled the shaggy little ponies' manes and threw snow upon them. The horses, restless, began to bite each other, and the Cossacks, scattered on the snow like juniper-bushes, reined them in.

The cottage-door remained open. The lucky horseshoe, nailed to the threshold, glittered in the light of the hearth, which threw blood-red streaks between the legs of the table, across the door and beyond it on to the snow.

'I wonder whether they will ever return to their families?' he thought, and: 'How queer it is that one should meet people like that.'

He was sorry for them.

The captain touched his arm and asked the way.

'Straight on.'

'Far?'

'No, not far, not at all far.'

'Where is it?'

The little group stood in front of him by the side of their wolf-like ponies. He drew back into the cottage.

The thought confusedly crossed his mind: 'After all, we did sit together and ate together, two and two, like friends.'

He began hurriedly, 'Turn to the left at the crossroads, then across the fields as far as Gregor's cottage...'

The captain made a sign that he did not understand.

He thought: 'Perhaps they will lose their way and make a fuss; then they will come back to the cottage and eat the meat. I will go with them as far as the cross-roads.'

They crept down the road, passed the clump of pine-trees which came out in a point beside the brook, and went along the valley on the slippery stones. A large block of ice lay across the brook, shaped like a silver plough; the waves surrounded it as with golden crescents. The snow creaked under the soldiers' feet. Yakob walked beside them on his sandals, like a silent ghost.

'Now keep straight on as far as the cross,' he said, pointing to a dark object with a long shadow. 'I can't see anything,' said the captain. He accompanied them as far as the cross, by the side of which stood a little shrine; the wan saint was wearing a crown of icicles.

From that point the village could be seen across the fields. Yakob discovered that the chain of lights which he had observed earlier in the evening, had come down from the mountains, for it now seemed to be close to the village.

Silence reigned in the sleeping world, every step could be heard.

This silence filled Yakob's heart with a wild fear; he turned round with a feeling of helplessness and looked back at his cottage. Probably the fire was now going out; a red glow appeared and disappeared on the windows.

Beyond the cross the road lay through low-lying ground, and was crossed by another road which led abruptly downwards into fields. Yakob hesitated.

'Come on, old man, come on,' they called to him, and walked on without waiting for his answer. The Cossacks dug their heels into the rugged ice of the road, and tumbled about in all directions. They had left their horses at the cross-roads. Each one kept a close hold on his gun, so that there should be no noise. They were whispering to each other; it sounded as if a congregation were murmuring their prayers. Yakob led them, and mentally he held fast to every bush, every lump of ice, saying to himself at every step that now he was going to leave them, they could not miss the road now. But he was afraid.

They no longer whispered, they had become taciturn as they pushed onwards, stumbling, breathing hard.

'As far as Gregor's cottage, and then no more!'

The effect of the drink was passing off. He rubbed his eyes, drew his rags across his chest. 'What was he doing, leading these people about on this night?'

He suddenly stopped where the field-road crossed theirs; the soldiers in front and behind threw themselves down. It was as if the ground had swallowed them.

A black horse was standing in the middle of the road, with extended nostrils. Its black mane, covered with hoar-frost, was tossed about its head; the saddle-bags, which were fur-lined, swung in the breeze; large dark drops were falling from its leg to the ground.

'Damn it!' cursed the captain.

The horse looked meekly at them, and stretched its head forward submissively. Yakob was sorry for the creature; perhaps one could do something for it. He stood still beside it, and again pointed out the road.

'I have done enough, I shan't go any further!' He scratched his head and smiled, thinking that this was a good opportunity for escape.

'Come on,' hissed the captain so venomously in his ear that he marched forward without delay; they followed.

A dull fear mixed with resentment gripped him with terrible force. He now ran at the head like a sheep worried by watch-dogs.

They stopped in front of the cottage, silent, breathless, expectant.

Yakob looked at his companions with boundless astonishment. Their faces under their fur-caps had a tense, cruel look, their brows were wrinkled, their eyes glittered.

From all sides other Cossacks were advancing.

He noticed only now that there were some lying concealed behind the fence on the straw in a confused mass.

He shuddered; thick drops of perspiration stood on his forehead. The beating of his heart filled his head like the noise of a hammer, it seemed to fill everything. In spite of the feeling that he was being forced to do this thing, he again heard the voice calling: 'Yakob, Yakob!'

Up the hillock where Gregor's cottage stood, they advanced on all fours.

He clambered upwards, thinking of his wife, and of the cow he had loosed. Fear veiled his eyes, he saw black spots dancing.

Gregor's cottage was empty as a graveyard. It had been abandoned; the open doors creaked on their hinges. Under the window stood a cradle, covered with snow.

Silently the soldiers surrounded the cottage, and Yakob went with them, as though mesmerized by terror, mute and miserable.

They had hardly got round, when a red glow shot up from the other side of the village. The soldiers threw themselves down in the snow.

The thundering of guns began on all sides; blood-red lights came flying overhead. An appalling noise broke out, reinforced by the echo from the mountains, as though the whole world were going to perish. The Cossacks advanced, trembling.

Yakob advanced with them, for the captain had hit him across the head. He saw stars when he received the blow, gesticulated wildly, and staggered along the road.

He could distinguish the road running out from the forest like a silver thread. As they advanced, they came under a diabolically heavy rifle fire; bullets were raining upon them from all sides.

Here and there he heard moans already, when one of the soldiers fell bleeding on the snow. Close to him fell the young Cossack who had given him the muffler and breeches. He held out his hand, groaning. Yakob wanted to stop, but the captain would not let him, but rapped him over the head again with his knuckles.

The soldiers lay in heaps. The rest wavered, fell back, hid in the ditch or threw themselves down. The rifle-fire came nearer, the outlines and faces of the advancing enemy could already be distinguished. Another blow on the head stretched Yakob to the ground, and he feigned death. The Cossacks retreated, the others advanced, and he understood that they belonged to his friends.

When he got up, he was immediately surrounded by them, taken by the scruff of the neck and so violently shaken, that he tumbled on his knees. Gunfire was roaring from the mountains, shadows of soldiers flitted past him, the wounded Cossacks groaned in the snow. Young, well-nourished looking men were bending over him.

Looking up into their faces, he crossed his hands over his chest and laughed joyfully.

'Ah, those Russians, those Russians...the villains!' he croaked, 'aho, aho, ho hurlai!' He rolled his tear-filled eyes.

Things were happening thick and fast. From where the chimney stood close to the water, near the manor-house, the village was burning. He could feel the heat and soot and hear the shouting of the crowd through the noise of the gunfire. Now he would see his wife and children again, the friendly soldiers surely had saved them. The young Cossack was still struggling on the ground; now he stretched himself out for his eternal sleep. 'Ah, the villains!' Yakob repeated; the great happiness which filled his heart rushed to his lips in incoherent babblings. 'The villains, they have served me nicely!'

He felt his bleeding head, crouched on his heels and got up. The fleshy red faces were still passing close to him, breathing harder and harder. Fear rose and fell in him like the flames of the burning village; again everything was swallowed up in indescribable noise.

Suddenly Yakob began to sob; he threw himself down at the soldiers' feet and wept bitterly, as though he would weep out his soul and the marrow of his bones.

They lifted him up, almost unconscious, and took him along the high road, under escort with fixed bayonets. His tears fell fast upon the snow, and thus he came into his own village, among his own people, pale as a corpse, with poison in his heart.

He looked dully at the blazing wooden church-spire where it stood enveloped in flames as though wrapped in an inflated glittering cloak. Dully he let his eyes wander over the hedges and fences; everything seemed unreal, as things seen across a distant wave or a downpour of rain, out of reach and strange.

He was standing where the field-path joined the high road. The soldiers sat down on a heap of stones and lighted their cigarettes.

Yakob, trembling all over, looked at his own black shadow; fugitives arrived from the burning village and swarmed past him; the rifle fire now sounded from the direction of the mountains.

Suddenly Gregor's cottage burst into flames. A blood-red glow inflated the clouds of smoke, trembled on the snow and ran over the pine-trees like gold.

Soldiers were arriving from that direction, streaming with blood, supported by their comrades.

Yakob stood motionless, looking at his shadow; fear was burning within him. He looked at the sky above the awful chaos on the earth, and became calmer. He tried to remember how it had all happened.

They had come, had given him food. His wife and children were probably safe in the manor-house. Blinking his swollen eyelids, he tried to deceive himself, crouched down near the guard who was smoking, and asked him for fire. His fear miraculously disappeared.

He began to talk rapidly to the soldier: 'I was sitting...the wind was moaning...' he told him circumstantially how he was sitting, what he had been thinking, how the shots had struck his cottage.

The soldier put his rifle between his knees, crossed his hands over his sleeves, spat out and sighed.

'But you have had underhand dealings with the Russians.'

'No...no.'

'Tell that to another.'

'I shall,' replied Yakob calmly.

'And who showed them the way?'

'Who?' said Yakob.

'Who showed them the way over here? Or did they find it on the map?'

'Yes, on the map,' assented Yakob, as though he were quite convinced.

'Well, who did?' said the soldier, wagging his head.

'Who?' repeated Yakob like an echo.

'I suppose it wasn't I?' said the soldier.

'I?' asked Yakob.

The other three soldiers approached inquisitively to where Yakob was crouching.

'A nice mess you've made,' one of them said, pointing to the wounded who were arriving across the fields. 'Do you understand?'

Yakob fixed his eyes on the soldiers' boots, and would not look in that, direction. But he could not understand what it all meant...all this noise, and the firing that ran from hill to hill.

'Nice mess this you've made, old man.'

'Yes.'

'You!'

Yakob looked up at them, and had the sensation of being deep down at the bottom of a well instead of crouching at their feet.

'That is a lie, a lie, a lie!' he cried, beating his chest; his hair stood on end. The soldiers sat down in a row on the stones. They were young, cold, tired.

'But now they'll play the deuce with you.'

'Why?' said Yakob softly, glancing sideways at them.

'You're an old ass,' remarked one of them.

'But,' he began again, 'I was sitting, looking at the snow....'

He had a great longing to talk to them, they looked as if they would understand, although they were so young.

'I was sitting...give me some fire...do you come from these parts yourselves?' They did not answer.

He thought of his cottage, the bread and sausage, the black horse at the cross-roads.

'They beat me,' he sobbed, covering his face with his rags.

The soldiers shrugged their shoulders: 'Why did you let them?'

'O...O...O!' cried the old man. But tears would no longer wash away a conviction which was taking possession of him, searing his soul as the flames seared the pines. 'Why did you let them? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?'

No, he was not ashamed of himself for that. But that he had shown them the way...the way they had come by...what did it all mean? All his tears would not wash away this conviction: that he had shown them the way...the way they had come by.

Guns were thundering from the hills, the village was burning, the mill was burning...a black mass of people was surrounding him. More and more wounded came in from the fields, covered with grey mud. The flying sparks from the mill fell at his feet.

A detachment of soldiers was returning.

'Get up, old man,' cried his guard; 'we're off!' Yakob jumped to his feet, hitched up his trousers, and went off perplexed, under cover of four bayonets that seemed to carry a piece of sky between them like a starred canopy.

His fear grew as he approached the village. He did not see the familiar cottages and hedges; he felt as though he were moving onwards without a goal. Moving onwards and yet not getting any farther. Moving onwards and yet hoping not to get to the end of the journey.

He sucked his pipe and paid no attention to anything; but the village was on his conscience.

The fear which filled his heart was nob like that which he had felt when the Cossacks arrived, but a senseless fear, depriving him of sight and hearing...as though there were no place for him in the world.

'Are we going too fast?' asked the guard hearing Yakob's heavy breathing.

'All right, all right,' he answered cheerfully. The friendly words had taken his fear away.

'Take it easy,' said the soldier. 'We will go more slowly. Here's a dry cigarette, smoke.'

Without turning round, he offered Yakob a cigarette, which he put behind his ear.

They entered the village. It smelt of burning, like a gipsy camp. The road seemed to waver in the flickering of the flames, the wind howled in the timber.

Yakob looked at the sky. Darkness and stars melted into one.

He would not look at the village. He knew there were only women and children in the cottages, the men had all gone. This thought was a relief to him, he hardly knew why.

Meanwhile the detachment of soldiers, instead of going to the manor-house, had turned down a narrow road which led to the mill. They stopped and formed fours. Every stone here was familiar to Yakob, and yet, standing in the snow up to his knees, he was puzzled as to where he was. If he could only sleep off this nightmare...he did not recognize the road...the night was far advanced, and the village not asleep as usual...if they would only let him go home!

He would return to-morrow.

The mill was burning out. Cinders were flying across from the granaries; the smoke bit into the eyes of the people who were standing about looking upwards, with their arms crossed.

Everything showed up brilliantly in the glare; the water was dripping from rung to rung of the silent wheel, and mixed its sound with that of the fire.

The adjoining buildings were fenced round with a small running fire; smoke whirled round the tumbling roof like a shock of hair shot through with flames. The faces of the bystanders assumed a metallic glow.

The wails of the miller and his family could be heard through the noise of battle, of water, and of fire.

It was as if the crumbling walls, the melting joints, the smoke, the cries were dripping down the wheel, transformed into blood, and were carried down by the black waves and swallowed up in the infinite abyss of the night.

'They beat me....' Yakob justified himself to himself, when the tears rose to his eyes again. No tears could wash away the conviction that it was he who had shown them the way by which they had come.

The first detachment was waiting for the arrival of the second. It arrived, bringing in prisoners, Cossacks. A large number of them were being marched along; they did not walk in order but irregularly, like tired peasants. They were laughing, smoking cigarettes, and pushing against each other. Among them were those who had come to his cottage; he recognized the captain and others.

When they saw Yakob they waved their hands cordially and called out to him, 'Old man, old man!'

Yakob did not reply; he shrunk into himself. Shame filled his soul. He looked at them vacantly. His forehead was wrinkled as with a great effort to remember something, but he could think of nothing but a huge millwheel turning under red, smooth waves. Suddenly he remembered: it was the young Cossack who had given him his brother's clothes.

'The other one,' he shouted, pointing to his muffler, 'where did you leave him?'

Soldiers came between them and pushed the crowd away.

There was a terrific crash in the mill; a thick red cloud rushed upwards, dotted with sparks. Under this cloud an ever-increasing mass of people was flocking towards the spot where Yakob was; they were murmuring, pulling the soldiers by their cloaks. Women, children, and old men pressed in a circle round him, gesticulating, shouting: 'It was he...he...he!'

Words were lost in the chaos of sounds, faces became merely a dense mass, above which fists were flung upwards like stones.

Yakob tripped about among the soldiers like a fawn in a cage, raised and lowered his head, and clutched his rags; he could not shut his quivering mouth, and from his breast came a cry like the sob of a child.

The crowd turned upon him with fists and nails; he hid his face in his rags, stopped his ears with his fingers, and shook his head.

The prisoners had been dispatched, and it was Yakob's turn to be taken before the officer in command of the battalion.

'Say that I...that I...' Yakob entreated his guard.

'What are you in such a hurry for?'

'Say that I...'

The soldiers were sitting round a camp-fire, piling up the faggots. Soup was boiling in a cauldron.

'Say that I...' he begged again, standing in the thick smoke.

At last he was taken into the school-house.

The officer in command stood in the middle of the room with a cigarette between his fingers.

'I...I...' groaned Yakob, already in the door. His dishevelled hair made him look like a sea-urchin; his face was quite disfigured with black marks of violence; behind his bleeding left ear still stuck the cigarette. His swollen upper lip was drawn sideways and gave him the expression of a ghastly smile. His eyes looked out helpless, dispirited, from his swollen lids.

'What do you want to say?' asked the officer, without looking at him. Something suddenly came over him.

'It was I,' he said hoarsely.

The soldier made his report.

'They gave me food,' Yakob said, 'and this muffler and breeches, and they beat me.'

'It was you who showed them the way?'

'It was.'

'You did show them the way?'

He nodded.

'Did they beat you in the cottage?'

Yakob hesitated. 'In the cottage we were having supper.'

'They beat you afterwards, on the way?'

He again hesitated, and looked into the officer's eyes. They were clear, calm eyes. The guard came a step nearer.

The officer looked down, turned towards the window and asked more gently: 'You had supper together in the cottage. Then you went out with them. Did they beat you on the way?'

He turned suddenly and looked at Yakob. The peasant stood, looked at the grey snowflakes outside the window, and his face, partly black, partly pallid, was wrinkled in deep folds.

'Well, what have you got to say?'

'It was I...' This interrogation made him alternately hot and cold.

'You who beat them, and not they who beat you?' laughed the officer.

'The meat is still there in the cottage, and here is what they gave me,' he said, holding up the muffler and tobacco.

The officer threw his cigarette away and turned on his heel. Yakob's eyes became dull, his arm with the muffler dropped.

The officer wrote an order. 'Take him away.' They passed the schoolmaster and some women and soldiers in the passage.

'Well...well...' they whispered, leaning against the wall.

The guard made a sign with his hand. Yakob, behind him, looked dully into the startled faces of the bystanders.

'How frightened he looks...how they have beaten him...how frightened he looks!' they murmured.

He put the muffler round his neck again, for he felt cold.

'That's him, that's him,' growled the crowd outside.

The manor-house was reached. The light from the numerous windows fell upon horses and gun-carriages drawn up in the yard.

'What do you want?' cried the sentry to the crowd, pushing them back.

He nodded towards Yakob. 'Where is he to go?'

'That sort...' murmured the crowd. Yakob's guard delivered his order. They stopped in the porch. The pillars threw long shadows which lost themselves towards the fence and across the waves of the stream beyond, in the darkness of the night.

The heat in the waiting-room was overpowering. This was the room where the bailiff had so often given him his pay. The office no longer existed. Soldiers were lying asleep everywhere.

They passed on into a brilliantly lighted room. The staff was quartered there. The general took a few steps across the room, murmured something and stood still in front of Yakob.

'Ah, that is the man?' he turned and looked at Yakob with his blue eyes that shot glances quick as lightning from under bushy grey eyebrows.

'It was I,' ejaculated Yakob hoarsely.

'It was you who showed them the way?'

Yakob became calmer. He felt he would be able to make himself more quickly understood here. 'It was.'

'You brought them here?'

'Yes.'

He passed his hand over his hair and shrank into himself again. He looked at the brilliant lights.

'Do you know what is the punishment for that?'

The general came a step nearer; Yakob felt overawed by the feeling of strength and power that emanated from him. He was choking. Yes, he understood and yet did not understand.'

'What have you got to say for yourself!'

'We had supper together...' he began, but stopped, for the general frowned and eyed him coldly. Yakob looked towards the window and listened to hear the sound of wind and waves. The general was still looking at him, and so they stood for a moment which seemed an eternity to Yakob, the man in the field-grey uniform who looked as if he had been sculptured in stone, and the quailing, shrunken, shivering form, covered with dirt and rags. Yakob felt as though a heavy weight were resting on him. Then both silently looked down.

'Take him back to the battalion.'

The steely sound of the command moved something in the souls of the soldiers, and took the enjoyment of their sleep from them.

They returned to the school-house. The crowd, as though following a thief caught in the act, ran by their side again.

They found room for the old man in a shed, some one threw him a blanket. Soldiers were sleeping in serried ranks. Their heavy breathing mixed with the sound of wind and waves, and the cold blue light of the moon embraced everything.

Yakob buried himself in the straw, looked out through a hole in the boarding and wept bitterly.

'What are you crying for?' asked the sentry outside, and tapped his shoulder with his gun.

Yakob did not answer.

'Thinking of your wife?' the soldier gossiped, walking up and down outside the shed. 'You're old, what good is your wife to you?' The soldier stopped and stretched his arms till the joints cracked.

'Or your children? Never mind, they'll get on in the world without a helpless old man like you.'

Yakob was silent, and the soldier crouched down near him.

'Old man, you ought...'

'No...' tremblingly came from the inside.

'You see,' the soldier paced up and down again, 'you are thinking of your cottage. I can understand that. But do you think the cottage will be any the worse off for your death?'

The soldier's simple and dour words outside in the blue night, his talk of Yakob's death, of his own death which might come at any moment, slowly brought sleep to Yakob.

In the morning he awoke with a start. The sun was shining on the snow, the mountains glittered like glass. The trees on the slopes were covered with millions of shining crystals; freshness floated between heaven and earth. Yakob stepped out of the shed, greeted the sentry and sat down on the boards, blinking his eyes.

The air was fresh and cold, tiny atoms of hoarfrost were flying about. Yakob felt the sun's warmth thawing his limbs, caressing him. He let himself be absorbed into the pure, rosy morning.

Doors creaked, and voices rang out clear and fresh. Opposite to him a squadron of Uhlans were waiting at the farrier's, who came out, black as a charcoal-burner, and chatted with them. They were laughing, their eyes shone. From inside the forge the hammer rang out like a bell. Yakob held his head in his hand and listened. At each stroke he shut his eyes. The soldiers brought him a cup of hot coffee; he drank it and lighted his pipe.

The murmuring of the brook, punctuated by the hammer-strokes, stimulated his thoughts till they became clearer, limpid as the stream.

'It was I...it was I...' he silently confided to all the fresh voices of the morning.

The guard again took him away with fixed bayonets. He knew where he was going. They would go through the village and stop at the wall of the cemetery.

The sky was becoming overcast, the beauty of the morning was waning. They called at the school-house for orders. Yakob remained outside the open window.

'I won't...' he heard a voice.

'Nor I...' another.

Yakob leant against the fence, supported his temples on his fists and watched the snow-clouds and mists.

A feeling of immense, heavy weariness came over him, and made him limp. He could see the ruins of the mill, the tumbled-down granaries, the broken doors. The water trickled down the wheel; smoke and soot were floating on the water, yet the water flowed on.

Guilty...not guilty.... What did it all matter?

'Do you hear?' he asked of the water. 'Do you hear?' he asked of his wife and children and his little property.

They took him here and they took him there. They made him wait outside houses, and he sat down on the steps as if he had never been used to anything else. He picked up a dry branch and gently tapped the snow with it and waited. He waited as in a dream, going round and round the wish that it might all be over soon.

While he was waiting, the crowd amused themselves with shaking their fists at him; he was thankful that his wife seemed to have gone away to the town and did not see him.

At last his guard went off in a bad temper. A soldier on horseback remained with him.

'Come on, old man,' he said, 'no one will have anything to do with it.'

Yakob glanced at him; the soldier and his horse seemed to be towering above the cottages, above the trees of the park with their flocks of circling crows. He looked into the far distance.

'It was I.'

'You're going begging, old man.'

Again they began their round, and behind them followed the miller's wife and other women. His legs were giving way, as though they were rushes. He took off his cap and gave a tired look in the direction of his cottage.

At last they joined a detachment which was starting off on the old road. They went as far as Gregor's cottage, then to the cross-roads, and in single file down the path. From time to time isolated gunshots rang out.

They sat down by the side of a ditch.

'We've got to finish this business,' said the sergeant, and scratched his head. 'No one would come forward voluntarily... I have been ordered....'

The soldiers looked embarrassed and drew away, looking at Yakob.

He hid his head between his knees, and his thoughts dwelt on everything, sky, water, mountains, fire.

His heart was breaking; a terrible sweat stood on his brows.

Shots rang out.

A deep groan escaped from Yakob's breast, a groan like a winter-wind. He sprang up, stood on the edge of the ditch, sighed with all the strength of his old breast and fell like a branch.

Puffs of smoke rose from the ditch and from the forests.

'P.P.C.'

(A LADY'S NARRATIVE)

[An incident during the early part of the World War, when the Russians, retreating before the victorious Austro-German armies, destroyed everything.]

BY

MME RYGIER-NALKOWSKA

I

At the time when the bridges over the Vistula still existed, connecting by stone and iron the banks of the town now split in two, I drove to the opposite side of the river into the country to my abandoned home, for I thought I might still succeed in transporting to the town the rest of the articles I had left behind, and so preserve them from a doubtful fate.

I was specially anxious to bring back the cases full of books that had been early packed and duly placed in a garret. They included one part of the library that had long ago been removed, but owing to their considerable weight they had been passed over in the hurry of the first removal.

The house had been locked up and entrusted to the sure care of Martin, an old fellow bent half to the ground, who with his wife also kept an eye on the rest of the buildings, the garden, and the forest.

When I arrived I found the whole of my wild, forgotten forest-world absolutely changed and transformed into one great camp. But the empty wood was moving like a living thing, like the menacing 'Birnam wood' before the eyes of Macbeth. It was full of an army, with each of their handsome big horses tied to a pine in the forest. Farther off across the roots could be seen small grey tents stretched on logs. Most of the exhausted blackened men were lying all over the ground and sleeping among the quiet beasts. Along the peaceful, silky forest paths, in a continuous line, like automobiles in the Monte Pincio park, stood small field kitchens on wheels, gunpowder boxes, and carts.

At the foot of the forest, on the flowery meadow, unmown this year, were feeding pretty Ukraine cattle driven from some distant place. Quiet little sheep, not brought up in our country, were eating grass on a neighbouring hillock.

Martin's bent figure was hastily coming along the road from the house, making unintelligible signs. When he was quite close he explained in a low discontented voice, and as if washing his hands of all responsibility, that I had been robbed. 'I was going round,' he said, 'this very morning, as it was my duty to do. There was no one to be seen. Now the whole forest is full of soldiers. They came, opened the house, and stole absolutely everything. My wife came upon them as they were going out!'

'What? Stole everything?' I asked.

Martin was silent a moment; at last he said: 'Well, for instance, the samovar; absolutely everything!'

I found the front door, in fact, wide open, and in it Martin's wife, with gloom depicted on her face. The floors were covered with articles dragged out of the drawers in the rooms on the upper floor. In the garrets scores of books in the most appalling disorder were scattered from out of parcels and boxes. Unbound volumes had been shaken, so that single sheets and maps were found in various places or not found at all.

I went into the veranda. In the green of the astonished garden, now paling in the dusk, men were sleeping here and there. There was a specially large swarm in the part of the garden where ripe raspberries were growing. Nearer the house, under a shady d'Amarlis pear tree, four soldiers were lying and playing at cards. They all had attached to their caps masks to protect them from poison-gas with two thick glasses for the eyes, and with this second great pair of eyes on them their heads looked like those of certain worms. In the packs of cards I recognized without trouble some that used to lie by our fire-place. I went up to the soldiers and pointed out that they had plundered my house, and that I missed several things, and was anxious to find them, especially women's dresses not of use to any one there, and that I wanted to be assured that no one would come into the house in future--at least till I had packed afresh the damaged books and collected what remained.

I could speak freely, for none of them so much as thought of interrupting me. Then I was silent, whereupon the soldier lying nearest raised his head--the movement put me in mind of a hydrostatic balance--gave me a long look and said: 'What have we to do with your books? We don't even understand your language!' Then, looking at me amiably with his double pair of eyes, he took a bite of a half-ripe pear as green as a cucumber.

'Nothing to be got here: you must go to an officer,' Martin advised, as he stood a little to the side of me.

The officers had their quarters about a quarter of a mile away, in a small house near the forest path. The mist passed off, and in the darkness in the middle of the wood a number of fires shone. One could hear a confused noise, unknown soldiers' songs, and mournful music. We soon reached our destination. We were asked to go into the nearly empty room, where there was a murmur of voices of soldiers; they were all standing. At a long table, by the light of a small candle without a candlestick, two men were writing something, and one was dipping in a plate proofs of photographs. Some one asked if I felt any fear, and when I hastened to reassure him entirely, he gave me a chair. Martin stood, doubled up, at the door.

A moment later a young officer, informed by a soldier of my arrival, came down from above, clapped his spurs together in a salute and inquired what I wanted. When he heard my business his brow darkened and he became severe. 'Till now we have had no instance of such an occurrence,' he informed me with much dignity, and his voice sounded sincere. 'Where is the place?' he asked. 'At the end of the wood?'

'Quite right,' I answered.

'Ah, then, it is not our soldiers,' he said with relief; 'there is a detachment of machine gunners there, and they have no officers at all.'

He expressed a wish, in spite of the lateness of the hour, to examine the damage personally with two other officers. They assured me that the things were bound to be found, and punishment would fall on the guilty under the severe military law.

We all walked back through the camp by a forest track which I had known from childhood as well as the paths of my own garden. The mist had thickened, the fires seemed veiled as with cobwebs. Everywhere around horses were eating hay and scraping up the ground solid with pine-tree roots. Songs ended in silence and began again farther off.

On the way I explained directly to the officers that my special object was not to get back the things or to punish the thieves, and certainly not according to 'the severe military law'. How was I to trace the thieves? My watchman would certainly not recognize them, because he was not familiar with shoulder straps, and would say that in that respect all soldiers were alike. I was only afraid of further damage in the house, its locks being rotten, and what I desired was that in case the army stayed there, a guard should be appointed.

So we reached the house. Martin conducted the gentlemen through the rooms, and by the light of a candle showed them the condition of things. The officers, with obvious annoyance, discovered a 'veritable pogrom'. They could not be expected to understand what the loss incurred by the scattering of so many books meant to me; one of them smelt of English 'Sweet Pea' perfume, like a bouquet of flowers. Yet they clinked their spurs together, and as they went out they again apologized for the injury done and appointed a sentry, who went on guard at midnight.

II

Day came fall of clouds that hung right over the tops of the trees, full of wind and cold, but dry--quite a genuine summer day.

Round the house from early morning soldiers were moving about, mitigating the weariness of the man on guard. Now one, now another wanted to see how the pillaged house looked. Quite simply they walked through the open door into the interior, finishing what remained of the unripe apples they had picked in the garden. One stood still on the threshold, put his hand to his cap, bowed, and duly asked, 'if the lady would allow?'

Then he entered, stooped, and picked up two books from the ground. 'May I be permitted to take the liberty of asking to whom these books belong? What is the reason for their exceedingly great number? Do they serve a special department of study?' He made his inquiries in such a stilted way that I was forced laboriously to keep my answers on the same level. He owned he would be happy if I would agree that he should help in the work, for he had not had a book in his hand for a year. He therefore stayed in the garret and with the anxiety of a genuine bibliomaniac collected volumes of similar size and shape, put together scattered maps and tied up bundles. Martin looked distrustfully at this assistant, and annoyance was depicted on the face of Martin's wife. In front of the house one of the soldiers had brought cigarettes to the man on guard. Another turned to him ironically: 'Well, under the circumstances I suppose you are going to light one?'

'You are not allowed to light a cigarette on guard?'

'It wouldn't be allowed; but perhaps, as there is no officer to see me....'

The speaker was a young, fair-haired, amiable boy, assistant to an engine driver in some small town in Siberia. He was quite ready to relate his history. He could not wonder sufficiently how it came to pass that he was still alive. He had run away from the trenches at S., certain that he would die if he were not taken prisoner. The fire of the enemy was concentrated on their entrenchment, so as to cut off all chance of escape. Every one round him fell, and he was constantly feeling himself to ascertain that he was not wounded. 'You see, lady, when they turn their whole fire on one spot, you must get away; it rains so thick that no one can stand it.'

'Well, and didn't you fire just as thick?'

He looked with amiable wonder. 'When we had nothing to fire?' he said good-humouredly.

Well, somehow it all ended happily. But, then, the others, his companions...ah, how dashing they had been, what fellows! An admirable, glorious army, the S. Regiment! Almost everyone was killed; it was sad to see them. Now they had to fill up the gaps with raw recruits; but it was no longer the old army; there will never be such fighting again.... It will be hard to discipline them. They had fought continuously for a year. A whole year in the war! They had been close to Drialdow, in Lwow, even close to Cracow itself. 'Do you know Cracow, lady?'

'I do.'

'Well, then, just there, just five miles from Cracow. The bitter cold of a windy day penetrated to our bones. To think that the town was only five miles off!'

I went away to return to the packing of my books. At the door I noticed a woman standing, a neighbour; she was frightened and timid.

'I suppose they have robbed you, lady?'

'They have.'

'And now they are at it in my place,' she said softly. 'Their cattle have eaten up my whole meadow, and they are tearing up everything in my kitchen-garden. I was looking this morning; not a cucumber left. To-morrow they will begin mowing the oats; the officer gave me an advance in money, and the rest he paid with note of hand. Is it true that they are going to burn everything?'

'I don't know.'

The new watchman came up, young, black-eyed, a gloomy Siberian villager. When he laughed, his teeth shone like claws.

'We have stolen nothing, but we are ordered to do penance,' he said defiantly to Martin. 'Very well, we'll do it. It was worse in the trenches--a great deal worse! Often we were so close to the enemy that we could see them perfectly. We used to take off our caps, raise them in the air; they fired. If they hit, then we waved a white handkerchief: that meant they had made a hit. Later on they would show their caps and we fired.'

'Are you from a distance?' Martin asked.

'From Siberia,' he answered, and turned his head. 'We were four brothers all serving in the army; two still write to me, the fourth is gone. Our father is an old man, and neither ploughs nor sows. He sold a beautiful colt for 150 roubles, for what is the use of a horse when there is no more farming? God! what a country this is,' he continued with pity. 'With us in Siberia a farmer with no more than ten cows is called poor. We are rich! We have land where wheat grows like anything. Manure we cart away and burn; we've no use for it. Ah! Siberia!'

The woman, my neighbour, sat in silence. It was strange to her to hear of this country as the Promised Land. When she had to go she said, thoughtfully and nervously: 'Of course if I hadn't sold him the oats they would have taken them. Even those two roubles on account were better than that.'

I went upstairs again, and by evening the work of packing the books and things was completed.

The soldier who loved books made elaborate remarks on them also to his simple comrades. He spoke about the psychical aspect of fighting, the physiology of heroic deeds, the resignation of those destined for death, &c. He was a thoughtful man and unquestionably sensitive; but all that he said had the stamp of oriental thought, systematically arranged in advance and quite perfectly expressed at the moment, free from the immediate naivete of elementary knowledge.

'Do you belong,' I said, 'to this detachment of machine gunners?'

'Unquestionably; I am, as you see, lady, a simple soldier.'

'I should like to see a machine gun at close quarters. Can I?'

I immediately perceived that I had asked something out of order. He was confused and turned pale.

'I have never seen a machine gun,' I continued, 'up to now; but, of course, if there are any difficulties...'

'It is not that,' he answered, with hesitation. 'I must tell you honestly, lady, we haven't a single cartridge left.'

He checked himself and was silent; at that moment he did not show the repose of a psychologist.

'Do you understand, lady?'

'I do.'

'And also we have absolutely no officers. There is nothing but what you see there in the forest; the rest are pitiful remnants--some 200 soldiers left out of two regiments.'

Early next day Martin joyously informed me that in the night the soldiers had gone away. They had burnt nothing, but it was likely that another detachment would come in by the evening.

'And the soldier who helped you to pack was here very early. I told him the lady was asleep, so he only left this card.'

_It was a visiting card with a bent edge; at the bottom was written, in pencil and in Roman characters,_

'p.p.c.'

'Yes, my friend,' I thought to myself, 'that is just the souvenir I should have expected you to leave me after plundering me right and left... a "P.P.C." card! And my deliverance from you means destruction to somebody else's woods, house, and garden.'