The peasants, [vol. 2]

Now dawned those chilly glacial days, days of dismal and mournful dejection, lit with a dribbling feeble light; corpse-like days, when the birds flew away to the woods with crie...

Towards noon it had cleared up a little, but only as if a rushlight had been kindled and whisked about among the shadows; what brightness there was vanished soon, and it grew da...

It was not very early in the morning when the miller took Antek on as a workman, and, leaving him in the yard amongst great piles of logs, went to Matthew, who was just then get...

It had again frozen during the night, and as the frost came after a couple of mild days and damp fogs, the trees were all covered over with a moss-like growth of glassy crystals...

The Boryna family returned from church very late; and but a few minutes later, they were all in bed, snoring loud. All except Yagna alone. Wearied though she was, she did not fa...

At the first words, Yagna had started up, struck with the feeling that the fight had been about herself. But presently she sat down again upon a chest, pressing her lips to the...

“In such a storm as this, how could I go faster? I had to grope my way along, for the snow blew in my eyes so, I could not keep them open; and it drives along the roads so thick...

On Twelfth Night, which that year fell on a Monday, the folk were slowly filing out of church, even before Vespers were over. For they heard from the tavern the music and singin...

Everybody in the house was now taciturn, veiled in gloom, living in the continual expectation of some awful thing about to take place, as under a roof that one knows may at any...

The snow had been, since early morning, threatening to fall. The day rose, cloudy and very boisterous; grains of snow came down, minute, like unsifted groats; and the gale, gain...

Dame Klemba had invited elderly women, for the most part, kinswomen or good friends of hers, and they had all come in proper time, as careful not to be late as not to disregard...

Past the orchard, gliding swiftly, stooping forward as they went under the snow-laden boughs, they ran like frightened deer along by the barns and into the murky snow-plain, int...

Dawn had scarcely risen, people had but just begun to rub their eyes and wake up, when they all of one accord made their way to the scene of the fire. Some even said their praye...

Spring was drawing nigh. March had come, with its own most foul weather—quagmiry, chilly, foggy; with its daily falls of sleet, its daily thick, shaggy, dingy mists, creeping al...