Meanwhile, the golden and red stripes which were shining on the western sky changed gradually into golden ribbons and golden knots, and finally they vanished. Darkness came; and the stars twinkled in the heavens, looking sharply and dryly on the earth, as is usual in winter. The frost grew severe, and began to bite the ears of the future organist of Ponikla; so, knowing the road perfectly, Pan Klen decided to cut across the field, and reach his own house the more quickly.
After a while he seemed black on the level, snowy espanse,—tall, sticking up ridiculously. It occurred to him that to kill time he might play a little before his fingers got stiff; and as he thought so he did. His voice sounded strangely in the night and on that waste, as if he were frightened a little by that white, melancholy plain; and it sounded all the more strangely that Klen played the most joyous things. He recollected that he had begun to play and sing, after one and another glass at the tile-maker's, that Olka accompanied him gladly with her thin little voice. He wished now to play those same songs, so he began with that with which she had begun:
"Level, O God, the mountains with the valleys,
Let them be very level!
Bring, O God, my love,
Bring him early!"
But the song did not please the tile-maker, for it seemed to him a "peasant song," and he commanded Klen to sing a "noble song." Then they took up another, which Olka had learned in Zagrabie:—
"Pan Ludwig went a hunting,
He left Helunia like a picture.
Pan Ludwig came home, the music was playing.