ight," said Mrs. Tiralla, and smiled contentedly. "There's so
much vermin in this old house that it's quite dreadful. And we've
cockroaches as well in the kitchen--"

"The walls are covered with them every evening," the girl chimed in
eagerly. "The __gospodarz__ had better come to my kitchen some evening,
when the light's out, and see it for himself, and then _he'll_ say,
'Ugh!' They fly at your head, and into your face, and against your
nose, eyes, and ears. They crawl about everywhere--ugh!" She threw her
apron over her head and gave a loud shriek.

"_Psia krew_, what a noise! Confound you, woman, can't you hold your
tongue for five seconds, not for those few moments when I want to
sleep?"

The door of the room was flung open and the master [Pg 7] began
scolding the maid in an angry voice. But when he caught sight of his
wife behind the girl his tone became gentler, even anxious. "What is
it, what is it?" For Mrs. Tiralla had also screamed, as if in sudden
terror. "Why do you both scream so? My heart! why do you both scream
so? What _has_ happened? Why, you're quite pale. Tell me, my Sophia,
what's happened to you?"

You could see that this big man, with his strong limbs and ruddy-brown
face, was very anxious about his wife, and, after hitching up his
trousers (for he knew that she disliked him to take off his braces and
make himself comfortable. "Fie, what a boor you are!" she would then
say to him), he quickly approached her. "What on earth has happened to
you? Tell me."

The woman's black eyes stared at him out of her pale face. "Holy
Mother, the rats again!" she stammered, and stretched out her hands as
though she wanted to seize hold of something.

Then Mr. Tiralla burst out laughing. "Rats? But, my dear little woman,
there are always rats where there are pigs; and why shouldn't there
be some here on the farm? If it's nothing but that." He laughed
good-naturedly. "I thought you must have seen the little Plucka,[A] or
the 'Babok,' the black man, in the cellar. Why didn't you say, 'All
good spirits praise God!' and then the rats would also have ran away?"

[Footnote A: Plucka: a ghost with feet like a hen.]

"Don't blaspheme," she said in an icy tone. "God punish you for so
doing." And when he playfully tried to embrace her, and pushed his
enormous, hairy hand under her chin, she shrank back, and, holding her
apron up to her eyes, she burst into tears. She sobbed bitterly.

[Pg 8]

It was in va