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BOOK II.—THE CASTLE

ARGUMENT

Hunting the hare with hounds—A guest in the castle—The last of the retainers tells the story of the last of the Horeszkos—A glance into the garden—The girl among the cucumbers—Breakfast—Pani Telimena's St. Petersburg story—New outbreak of the quarrel over Bobtail and Falcon—The intervention of Robak—The Seneschal's speech—The wager—Off for mushrooms.

Who among us does not remember the years when, as a young lad, with his gun on his shoulder, he went whistling into the fields, where no rampart, no fence blocked his path; where, when you overstepped a boundary strip, you did not recognise it as belonging to another! For in Lithuania a hunter is like a ship upon the sea; wherever he will, and by whatever path he will, he roams far and wide! Like a prophet he gazes on the sky, where in the clouds there are many signs that the hunter's eye can see; or like an enchanter he talks with the earth, which, though deaf to city-dwellers, whispers into his ear with a multitude of voices.

There a land rail calls from the meadow—it is vain to seek it, for it flees away through the grass like a pike in the Niemen; there above your head sounds the bell of early spring, the lark, hidden as deeply in the sky; there an eagle rustles with its broad wings through the airy heights, spreading terror among sparrows as a comet among stars; or a hawk, hanging beneath the

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