140 florins to him;
it gave us something to talk about for a week."

During this story Panna remained rigid and speechless, listening with
her mouth wide open, without interrupting, and when the peasant paused
she sat still a short time, as if her thoughts were far away, and then
went out like a sleep-walker, leaving the man staring after her in
astonishment at her strange behaviour.

From this hour she was a different person. She was no longer seen to
smile, she scarcely spoke, did not open her lips all day, and avoided
meeting people's eyes, even her own father's. When the gardener came
to visit her, she evaded him if possible, and if she could not do that,
sat by his side and let him talk while she gazed into vacancy. When,
one Sunday afternoon, the priest again appeared in the hut, probably to
renew his attempt at reconciliation, she darted out of the door like a
will-o'-the-wisp the instant she saw him, leaving the amazed and
disconcerted pastor alone in the room.

Panna went daily to the churchyard and busied herself for hours about
her husband's grave. She ordered a stone cross from the city with the
inscription: "To her cruelly murdered husband by his unforgetting
widow." But when she wanted to have the monument set up, the priest
interfered with great vehemence and declared he would never permit this
cross to be placed in "his" churchyard. Panna did not make the least
attempt to rebel against this command, but quietly told the workmen to
carry the stone to her house; there it was leaned against the wall
opposite to her bed, and daily, when she rose and went to rest, she sat
a long time on the edge of her pallet, gazing thoughtfully at the cross
and inscription.

Once she interrupted her father in the midst of an ordinary
conversation with the abrupt inquiry, whether, in dismissing a
prisoner, the time fixed in the sentence was rigidly kept, and if, for
instance, any one was condemned to six months' imprisonment, this six
months would run from the end of the trial or from the following
morning.

The old man thought the question strange and did not know how to answer
it. He, too, was secretly beginning frequently to share the opinion
now tolerably current in the village, that Panna was not altogether
right in her mind.

Meanwhile Spring had come, Panna worked industriously in the fields and
in the vineyard, nothing betrayed what thoughts were occupying the mind
of the silent, reserved woman. Not u