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Poor Roseen crept upstairs and sat disconsolately at the window, watching the corner of the haggard where she expected before long to see Mike appear. It had been the custom of the young pair to meet for a few moments every evening, under the shadow of the big hayrick and there converse before Mike returned home. He would surely come, if only to say good-bye. Poor fellow, what would he do?
The landlord said that this was nothing; and that he expected, in two days at the utmost, a very fresh young Irishman, for whom they would all forsake me. Nevertheless, I declined to wait, unless he could find me a hayrick to sleep in; for the insects of grass only tickle.
And it came so suddenly and spontaneously from the groundlings and the body of those in the amphitheatre that he was almost scared by it as a boy may be scared who has held a match to a sun-scorched hayrick. It was a hurricane of furious applause. Men leapt to their feet, sprang up on to the benches, waving their hats in the air, deafening him with the terrific uproar of their acclamations.
There is only one story of the house itself which is merely the sloping thatched roof with a hole in the top to give passage to the smoke and resembles a rough tent or hayrick set upon an elevated stand. The space under the platform is left open; and serves as a store-house for the dried fish, that forms the staple food of all sorts of people in Kamschatka.
The fodder was so full of snow that it was impossible for the girl to handle it at all, so she dug the ladder out of the snow and placed it against the long hayrick beside the fence and forked the hay over into the racks below.
Milly stooped down, and there in a soft little place, just between the hayrick and the ground, what do you think she saw? Three large brownish eggs lying in a sort of rough nest in the hay, and looking so round and fresh and tempting, that Milly gave a little cry of delight. "Oh, Tiza, how be utiful! How did they get there?" "It's old Sally, our white hen you know, laid them.
The chap kept on edging in and bothering, instead of asking for some men and taking up his own position, till I got angry, and the carbines began popping on the other side of the village. Then I said, 'For God's sake be quiet, and sit down where you are! If you see anybody come out of the village, shoot at him. I knew he couldn't hit a hayrick at a yard.
His aunt, Marfinka, and Vikentev, who had just happened to turn up, drove to the hay harvest, and the afternoon peace soon reigned over the house. One man crawled into the hayrick, another in the outhouse, another slept in the family carriage itself, while others took advantage of the mistress's absence to go into the outskirts of the town. Raisky's thoughts were filled with Vera.
Wandering into a copse by the road-side but not in that place; two or three miles off he tore out from a fence a thick, hard, knotted stake; and, sitting down beneath a hayrick, spent some time in shaping it, in peeling off the bark, and fashioning its jagged head with his knife. The day passed on. Noon, afternoon, evening. Sunset.
"Come into the big spaces and tell me what you want to say. . . ." For a while they walked on over the clean-cut turf and the wind from the sea swept through the gorse and the rustling grasses, and kissed them, and passed on. "There is a hayrick, I see, girl o' mine," said Vane. "Let's go and sit under it. And in defiance of all laws and regulations we will there smoke a cigarette."
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