ditches. The road itself was overgrown with grass on both sides, scarce
leaving room for a little winding ribbon of a track in the centre, and
even there the ruts, which the last luckless cart had left behind it,
were hidden by weeds. It was weeks since anybody had passed that way,
for every village was afraid of the village next to it, every man
avoided his neighbour, and feared to look upon his face.

The lanes and byeways had been quite abandoned, they were only
distinguishable by the luxuriant crop of weeds which covered them--weeds
more rampant and of darker colour than were to be found elsewhere. The
whole land looked just as it used to look in the olden times after a
Tartar invasion.

The horse trotted along all alone, before and behind him there was no
trace either of man or beast, the rider looked round about her with a
melancholy eye.

Here and there on both sides of the road crooked trees were tottering to
their fall. They had been stripped bare by the devastating army of
caterpillars, and instead of their beautiful green leaves they were
clothed with the rags of dusty spider-webs; further away the fruitless
orchards looked as if they had been burnt with fire, and, stretching to
the horizon, as far as the eye could reach, the arid corn-fields had the
appearance of being covered with nothing but scrappy stubble.

The atmosphere was oppressive and lay like a stifling weight on the
breast of man; and if, now and then, a faint breath of air flitted
languidly over the country, it was as burning hot as if it had just come
out of the mouth of a blast-furnace, and only increased the exhausting
sensation of oppression.

Then slowly, very slowly, it began to grow dark. There was a long black
stripe all along the edge of the sky, which gradually bulged out into a
sort of black veil, and as the infrequent stars twinkled forth in the
pallid sky, this dark veil blotted them out one by one; it was just as
if some mighty spirit-hand had drawn a crape curtain across a funeral
vault bright with glittering lamps.

It was already midnight when Maria Kamienszka perceived the first
roadside _csarda_[10] which, according to her calculations, lay midway
between the county-town and Hetfala. In the midnight gloom and silence
it was easier to distinguish distant sounds than to clearly recognise
near objects.

[Footnote 10: Inn.]

It seemed to Maria as if she heard a medley of despairing yells and
savage maledictions, and diml