'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.

Yakb 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.

Yakb was looking at the snow which was falling thickly, and tried to penetrate the veil with his eyes. Stronger and faster raged the blizzard. Yakb'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.

'Yakb...Yakb...Yakb!'

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.

Yakb 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.

Yakb 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, Yakb 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 Yakb, 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.

Yakb 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 Yakb, 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.'

Yakb 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?' Yakb 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.

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

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

Yakb 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.'

Yakb 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. Yakb 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. Yakb 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 Yakb'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. Yakb 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. Yakb 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 Yakb 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.

Yakb, 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.

Yakb 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!' Yakb 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 Yakb'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 oniy 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.'

THE END