house itself, with its back to the gardens and front to the highway, was enormous, but of wood. The pine of the walls had grown so dark with age that the panes in the windows seemed white in contrast. Above the walls rose a gigantic roof with four chimneys in the middle, and two dovecotes at the gables. A whole cloud of white doves were collected on the roof, now flying away with clapping of wings, now dropping, like snowy kerchiefs, on the black ridges, now flapping around the pillars supporting the entrance.
That entrance, adorned with a shield on which the Billevich arms were painted, disturbed the proportions of the house, for it was not in the middle, but toward one side of it. Evidently the house had once been smaller, but new parts were added subsequently from one side, though the added parts had grown so black with the passage of years as not to differ in anything from the old. Two wings, of enormous length, rose on both sides of the house proper, and formed as it were two arms of a horseshoe. In these wings were guest-chambers used in time of great gatherings, kitchens, store-houses, carriage-houses, stables for carriage horses which the masters wished to keep near at hand, rooms for officials, servants, and house Cossacks.
In the middle of the broad yard grew old linden-trees, on them were storks' nests. Among the trees was a bear chained to a pillar. Two well-sweeps at the sides of the yard, a cross with the Passion of the Lord between two spears at the entrance, completed this picture of the residence of a powerful, noble family. At the right of the house, in the middle of frequent linden-trees, rose the straw roofs of stables, cow-houses, sheep-houses, and granaries.
Kmita entered the gate, which was open on both sides; like the arms of a noble awaiting the arrival of a guest. Then two dogs loitering through the yard announced the stranger, and from a wing two boys ran to take the horses.
At the same moment in the door of the main building stood a female figure, in which Kmita recognized Olenka at once. His heart beat more quickly, and throwing the reins to the servant, he went toward the porch with uncovered head, holding in one hand his sabre, and in the other his cap.
She stood before him like a charming vision, shading her eyes with her hand against the setting sun, and then
- VOL. I. — 20
