"Yatsek was sitting that night on a tree like a squirrel. Who could have thought then that he was just the man to whom the Lord God had given her?"
"And commanded us to continue in our orphanhood," added Marek.
"Do ye remember," asked Lukash, "how the rooms were all bright from her presence? They would not have been brighter from a hundred burning candles. And she at one time stood up, at another sat down, and a third time she laughed. And when she looked at a man it was as warm in his bosom as if he had drunk heated wine that same instant. Let us take a glass now on our terrible sadness."
They drank again; then Mateush struck a blow with his fist on the table, and shouted,--
"Ei! if she had not loved that Yatsek so!"
"Then what?" asked Yan, angrily, "dost think that she would fall in love with thee right away? Look at him--my dandy!"
"Well thou art no beauty!" retorted Mateush.
And they looked at each other with ill-feeling. But Lukash, though given greatly to quarrels, began now to pacify his brothers.
"Not for thee, not for thee, not for any of us," said he. "Another will get her and take her to the altar."
"For us there is nothing but sorrow and weeping," blurted out Marek.