Some months later three people walked out of Pognębin to the town, a peasant, his wife, and child. The peasant was very bent, more like an old man than an able-bodied one. They were going to the town because they could not find work at Pognębin. It was raining. The woman was sobbing bitterly at losing her cottage, and her native place. The peasant was silent. The road was empty, there was not a carriage, not a human being to be seen; the cross alone, wet from the rain, stretched its arms above them.—The rain fell more and more heavily, dimming the light.
Bartek, Magda and Franek were going to the town because the victor of Gravelotte and Sedan had to serve his term of imprisonment during the winter, on account of the affair with Boege.
Count and Countess Jarzyński continued to enjoy themselves in Dresden.
TWILIGHT
STEFAN ŻEROMSKI
The sun was gliding into a lustrous copper haze, drawn in wide streaks, like transparent dust, across the distant scene. It sank behind some thick red firs left standing at the edge of a clearing and behind the dark trunks which lay rotting on the hillside. Its beams still lighted the corners of a cottage, gilding it and colouring it scarlet; they penetrated the folds of grey clouds, and glittered on the water.
A recent storm had laid the marshy plains and newly cultivated woodlands partly under water. Here and on the furrows of the stubble-fields and the fresh autumn ploughing the puddles turned red and their irridescent surface became like molten glass, while entrancing violet shadows, dazzling to the sight, fell on the grey, beaten-down clods; the sand hills turned yellow; the weeds growing on the banks, the bushes at the edge of the field paths, all borrowed some unwonted momentary colour.
In a deep hollow surrounded by sparsely wooded hills to the east, west and south ran a little brook, which overflowed into bays, swamps, shallows and creeks. Tangles of reeds grew at the water's edge, lank bulrushes, sweet-flags, and clumps of willows. The still, red water was now shining in formless pale-green patches from under the large leaves of the water-lilies and coarse water-weeds.