and the hill she used to climb so [Pg 138] laboriously,
holding fast to the luxuriant moss, ferns, and projecting tree-roots, a
big, big mountain.

The deer would approach Rosa without fear, and look at her with their
limpid eyes. But she was full of fear; not of the deer, however, but of
the other creatures which surrounded her in the Przykop. The older she
grew, the more fearful she became. Marianna had told her too many tales
about them. The deep, deep silence, in which the woodpecker's hammering
on the bark used to sound like peals of thunder, made her shudder. And
still she would not have liked to give up that sweet emotion, nor give
up lying in the thick moss, gazing up into the tree-tops to find a bit
of sky. She was always within call, and that reassured her. But if a
sound found its way to her--her father's deep, bass voice, or her
mother's treble, or the maid's "_Psia krew_, where have you got
to?"--she would give a start as though she had been roughly handled or
had been caught doing something wrong, and turn scarlet and sigh as she
smoothed her thick, tousled hair.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Rosa Tiralla was very busy looking for mushrooms in the Przykop this
summer. It was the time of the damp, sultry dog-days, in which they
sprang up in a night. But not many were eaten in Starawie['s] or the
neighbourhood, for the public had been warned against them. The
schoolmaster had also warned the children in the school; they were
neither to gather nor eat any they were not quite sure of. People grew
alarmed.

"Many people have made themselves ill with eating mushrooms," said
Marianna to her mistress, when the latter spoke of sending Rosa to
fetch some.

Mrs. Tiralla laughed. "Nonsense, I know mushrooms very well."

[Pg 139]

"That makes no difference," exclaimed the maid, growing warm, "I won't
eat them even if I do know them. Ugh!" she spat on the ground,
"mushrooms are the devil's own vegetables."

"Why?" The woman looked at the maid with dull, wide-open eyes, in which
a dawning light suddenly began to gleam. She turned red and pale by
turns, blinked her eyes a little as though something were dazzling her,
and then smiled. "What do you mean by 'the devil's own vegetables'? I
don't understand you."

Marianna made the sign of the cross. "God bless it! But I don't know if
even that always helps. Many a one has got his death from eating a dish
of mushrooms. Who can say w