“To all of you—”
But he didn’t finish, for he drank the vodka, made a wry face, and putting down the glass with dissatisfaction, said,—
“That’s pure water. Give me a second from another bottle.”
The innkeeper poured from another. Margula twisted his face still more:
“Ai! haven’t you arrack?”
Evidently the same danger threatened Margula that threatened the women; but at that very time, in the mansion at Lupiskory, the landowner was preparing for one of the journals a long and exhaustive article, “On the right of landowners to sell liquor, this right being considered as the basis of society.” But Voytek co-operated only involuntarily to strengthen the basis of society, and that all the more because the sale here, though in a village, was really by the landowner.
When he had co-operated five times in succession he forgot, it is true, his lantern, in which the light had gone out, but he took the half-sleeping little girl by the hand, and said,—
“But come on, thou nightmare!”
The women had fallen asleep in a corner, no one bade farewell to Marysia. The whole story was this: Her mother was in the graveyard and she was going to Leschyntsi.