There is thundering and singing and shouting amid the silence of the
night with voices of fiddles and bass-viols "U-ha! U-ha!" Then the Ulans
knock out fire with their horseshoes, and it is wearisome for him there
on his horse. The hours drag on slowly; at last the lights are quenched;
now as far as the eye reaches there is mist, and mist impenetrable; now
the fog rises, evidently from the fields, and embraces the whole world
with a whitish cloud. You would say, a complete ocean. But that is
fields; soon the land-rail will be heard in the darkness, and the
bitterns will call from the reeds. The night is calm and cool,--in
truth, a Polish night! In the distance the pine-wood is sounding without
wind, like the roll of the sea. Soon dawn will whiten the East. In fact,
the cocks are beginning to crow behind the hedges. One answers to
another from cottage to cottage; the storks are screaming somewhere on
high. The Ulan feels well and bright. Some one had spoken of a battle
to-morrow. Hei! that will go on, like all the others, with shouting,
with fluttering of flaglets. The young blood is playing like a trumpet,
though the night cools it. But it is dawning. Already night is growing
pale; out of the shadows come forests, the thicket, a row of cottages,
the mill, the poplars. The well is squeaking like a metal banner on a
tower. What a beloved land, beautiful in the rosy gleams of the morning!
Oh, the one land, the one land!

Quiet! the watchful picket hears that some one is approaching. Of
course, they are coming to relieve the guard.

Suddenly some voice is heard above Skavinski,--

"Here, old man! Get up! What's the matter?"

The old man opens his eyes, and looks with wonder at the person standing