"No, no," said he, "they will not look for me; they are not even sorry I am gone. Do you suppose I am at all necessary to them? They never have understood me; and I never have been able to comprehend them. My mother has Wladzio; my father has Wladzio. They will be happier without me in the house."
Here, however, he could not help sighing.
"However, some day," he continued, "after a while,--after a long while,--I shall go to see my mother again. But now I should suffer too much, living with them; I do not like to think of it even. I should surely die of grief. There I was shut up all alone; no one ever talked to me as you used to talk to me, father. They were always telling me, whatever I did, that I had the manners of a peasant; that peasants did so and so. Yes, it is true, I am a peasant; they,--they are masters and lords. My little brother Wladzio is the only one I regret; he already began to know me, and smiled so sweetly on me as he would hold out his arms for me."
"My dear child," said Iermola, "do not talk in that way. Perhaps at this moment they are weeping over there and cursing me. You break my heart; you make me remember that I have betrayed them."
"Ah, well! let us talk about our happy life in Popielnia, father. Do you remember the time when we used to make our porringers, our little dishes, and when we went with Chwedko to the fair, and how astonished and pleased you were when we succeeded with our first glazed pitchers?"
"Ah, those days will never come again," sighed the old man.
"Why should they never return? I have forgotten nothing,--nothing at all. It was useless for them to forbid me over there; I used, in secret, to make little pots and porringers of the clay Iwaneck would bring me, and I know still how to glaze dishes and other things. We will build a kiln; you will see how we will work."
Talking thus, they both fell asleep; and when the song of the oriole which was warbling above their heads aroused them from their slumber, it was broad day, but under the trees hung a thick, damp fog.
The old man rose quickly; the child followed him; and they began to travel northward, guiding themselves by the thick mosses which grew on the trunks of the trees.
Although our great forests have been in some places greatly diminished, frequently cleared, and often half cut down and partly destroyed, the heart of them still recalls the majesty of the early ages of the world; here the coppices are so thick and the brakes so impenetrable that one finds the greatest difficulty in going through them.