mill. Triumphant, and also rather flustered with drink, she set her arms

akimbo, and danced and stamped and shouted in time with the music.

“What I say is true,” the smith in the adjoining room remarked; “for there it stands, in print in the papers—letters as big as an ox. There is no nation on earth that lives as we do. Not one!—Why, every big landowner domineers over us; so does every priest; so does every official. And all we have to do is work, and starve, and bow low to all men, lest they strike us in the face!—We have so little land of our own, that—for many of us—there presently will not be the least little patch left.... Meanwhile, the Squire has more land to himself than two villages put together!—Yesterday they were saying in court that there is to be a redistribution of land.”

“Whose land?”

“The gentlemen’s, of course.”

Yagustynka, who had come in, leaned over the table and laughed.

“Did you give it them, that you take it away! You are marvellous free with other people’s property!”

“Folk have self-government there,” the smith continued, without heeding the old woman’s interruption. “There, everybody goes to school; they all live in gentlemen’s houses, and are gentlemen.”

“Where may that be?” Yagustynka asked of Antek, who sat at the farther end of the table.

“In warm countries.”

“Then,” she screamed out angrily, “why does the smith not go there himself? The dirty dog! he is throwing dust in your eyes, lying to you ... and you blockheads believe him!”

“Yagustynka, pray be so good as to go peacefully whence you came.”

“No, I will not! The tavern is for us all; and I, poor as I am, have as much right here as you. You play the teacher here! you, who serve the Jews, who cringe to the officials, who pull off your cap to the Squire from a mile away! You loud-mouthed ranter, you! Oh, I know of....” She said no more. The smith had taken her under the ribs, pushed the door open with his foot, and pitched her into the big room, where she lay sprawling on the floor.

Without a word of reviling, she picked herself up, and called out cheerily:

“As strong as a horse, you are! I’d fain have such a husband!”

The folk burst into a guffaw, and she went out to curse in silence and alone.

By this time the tavern had begun to empty; the music had ceased, and the people were going home. The night was warm and the moon shone bright: no one stayed but the recruits, who shouted and drank their fill, and Ambrose, who, being exceeding mellow, had rushed into the middle of the road, singing and reeling, from one side to the other.

The knot of men who had the blacksmith for leader had also left the place.

The recruits too, a little later, when Yankel was putting out the lights, staggered forth, all arm in arm, and went down the road, bawling songs and howling and bellowing so that the dogs bayed at them.

Kuba alone remained, so fast asleep in the ashes, that Yankel had to awaken him. He would not rise, though, but kicked out, and aimed blows in the air.

“Off, Jew!” he stammered. “I will sleep as I choose. A tiller of the land am I; and you—you are a scurvy rascal and a villain!”

A pail of water sobered him so much that he rose, and with astonishment and dismay, learned that, having drunk a whole rouble’s worth, he was in Yankel’s debt for that amount.

“What! a quarter of a litre, rum, one herring, tobacco, and another quarter besides: can they make up a rouble? How’s that?” His brain was swimming.

Yankel, however, at last convinced him, and they came to an understanding about the gun which the Jew was to supply; although Kuba was firm in refusing to give him the oats demanded.

“My father was not a thief; neither am I.”

“Now go away, Kuba; it is time, and I have still some prayers to say.”

“Hear the old hypocrite! Asking a man to steal, and saying his prayers on the top of that!” he muttered, as he walked homewards, trying to remember things and sift them clear: for somehow he could not believe he had drunk a whole rouble’s worth. But he was not yet sober, and the cold night air made him dizzy; so he reeled and staggered along, now falling against the hedges, now against the logs of timber piled up outside the huts. He swore.

“May the devil wring your necks for cumbering the road so, rascals! You must have been tipsy when you did it. Yes, drunken wretches! and his Reverence’s warnings have been all for naught.... His Reverence....” Here reflection came to him; he realized the condition he was in, and felt overwhelmed with contrition. He stopped short, looking about him for some hard thing that might be handy. Then he forgot about that, and clutched at his shaggy mane, and beat his face with his fists.

“You drunken wretch, you plague-stricken swine! I will drag you before his Reverence, and he will rebuke you in presence of the whole congregation, and say you are a dog, and a miserable drunkard; you have drunk half a litre of vodka—a whole rouble’s worth—and are a beast, worse than a beast!”—A sudden wave of self-compassion then came over him; he sat down in the road and burst into tears.

The moon, large and splendid, was floating through the dark space; like silver nails in the firmament, a few stars shone, sparsely scattered about; a thin grey tissue of mist hung over the pond like a veil, and waved its folds above the village. The world had entered into that unfathomable quiet of the autumn night, save that the few who were going home sang as they went, and dogs were heard to bark now and then.

Also, upon the road in front of the tavern, Ambrose, still reeling from one side to the other, quavered forth his song:

“Tell, Marysia mine, Tell, O best and truest, Tell whose ale thou brewest, Tell, Marysia mine!”

which he repeated with interminable reiteration, until such time as the effects of his potations should cease.