Kapronski breathed, relieved. Were not the peasants the accusers in this matter? If they, then, were satisfied to have no further exhortation, he was not accountable for any consequences. He stepped forward. "I put you all upon your oath," he said, baring his head, and every one present followed his example. And having once again stated the matter to be sworn, the peasants, one after another, passed in front of the crucifix, giving their names and lifting three fingers of their right hand, saying: "I swear." But the mandatar's party after them, to a man, took the oath likewise. It was done quietly and quickly.
The commissioner pulled out his watch. "An hour and forty minutes," he said, triumphantly. His vehicle had stood by in readiness. He mounted at once, and quitted the village with all possible speed.
Autumn, as a rule, is by far the most pleasant season in the Galician highlands. The winter there is long, dreary, and trying; the spring cool, and all too short; the summer exceedingly hot, and liable to thunderstorms almost daily. But in the autumn Nature wears a genial face in the uplands, with a delicious continuance of sunshine, when the airy dome is scarcely ruffled by the breeze, and wondrously clear; day succeeding day of this gentle splendour till late in November sometimes. Not so, however, in the year we are speaking of. In that season the birds had left early for their southern haunts, the earth looking bare and cheerless all of a sudden; the sun had hidden within heavy clouds, and the whirling snowflakes were at their chill play before September was well out. Brighter days once more supervened, but they were bitterly cold, ushering in a fresh fall of snow and a dismal twilight of the heavens, which seemed determined to last.
The people sat gloomily by their firesides, growing the more alarmed at this early show of winter as they listened to the tales of the old folk among them, who remembered a similar season in their youth--the winter of 1792--which was a terrible visitation in that country, beginning as early as the present one. In that year the cold grew so intense that men scarcely ventured outside their cottages, because every breath they drew went like daggers to their lungs, and their limbs were benumbed in the space of a few minutes, so that even in trying to get from one end of the village to the other some had been frozen to death. And the snow drifted in such masses that the dwellers in the glens were hopelessly shut up, some actually dying of starvation. Thus ran the terrible tale; but the old folk at Zulawce were like old people everywhere, and the dread experience of their youth grew in horror with the receding years. The spectres of fear roused by these memories kept glaring at men and women within the lowly cottages.