At last they reached a wide plain, but before going out on it Pan Serafin and the priest directed Anulka to sit in the carriage, since they had to pass now not far from Belchantska, the trees of which, and even the mansion between them, were visible to the eye without glasses. The young lady looked on that house with emotion, for in it she had passed very many of the best, and the bitterest, days of her existence. She had wished to look first of all at Vyrambki, but the Belchantska lindens so covered it that the dwelling was not to be seen from the carriage. It occurred to Anulka that she might never again in her life see those places, so she sighed quietly and became sorrowful.
The Bukoyemskis looked challengingly and quickly at the mansion, the village, and the neighborhood, but great quiet reigned in those places. Along broad fallow lands, which were flooded in sunlight, were grazing cows and sheep, guarded by dogs, and crowds of children. Here and there flocks of geese seemed white spots, and had it not been for summer heat, one might have thought from afar that they were bits of snow lying on the hill slopes; for the rest the region seemed empty.
Pan Serafin, who lacked not the daring of a cavalier, wished to show the Krepetskis how little he cared for them, and directed to make the first halt at that place, and give rest to the horses. So the party stopped; on one side were fields of wheat waving under the wind and rustling gently; on the other was the silence of the plain broken only by the snorting of horses.
"Health! health!" said the attendants in answer to the snorting.
But that calm was not to the taste of the youngest Bukoyemski, who turned toward the mansion and cried to the absent Krepetskis, while he beckoned with his hand an invitation.
"But come out here, ye sons of a such a one! O Stump, show thy dog snout; we will soon put a cross on it with our sabres!"
Then he bent toward the carriage.
"Your ladyship," said he, "that Martsian and his company are not in a hurry to attack us, neither he nor his bandits from the wilderness."
"But do bandits attack?" asked the lady.
"Oh-ho! they do, but not us. And there are many of them in the wilderness of Kozenitse, and in the forest toward Cracow. If his Grace the King would grant pardon, enough would be found of those bandits right here in this neighborhood to make two good regiments."