“Ah!” he said, in a voice thick with vodka. “You see something on the road?”
“Yes.”
“A cart?”
“No, a carriage. It moves too quickly.”
A strange expression came over the peasant’s face, at no time a pleasing physiognomy. The bloodshot eyes flared up suddenly like a smouldering flame in brown paper. The unsteady, drink-sodden lips twitched. The man threw up his shaggy head, upon which hair and beard mingled in unkempt confusion. He glared along the road with eyes and face aglow with a sullen, beast-like hatred.
“A carriage! Then it is for the castle.”
“Possibly,” answered the starosta.
“The prince—curse him, curse his mother’s soul, curse his wife’s offspring!”
“Yes,” said the starosta quietly. “Yes, curse him and all his works. What is it you want, little father—tea?”
He turned into the shop and served his customer, duly inscribing the debt among others in a rough, cheap book.